harry … the ASIC guy

As a way of closing the door on 2008 and opening the door on 2009, I thought I’d start with a list of the Top 10 Posts of 2008. In order to be fair, I took into account several factors including the # of views, the # of comments, the distribution of views over time, the standard deviation of the mean time between views … OK … I’ll admit it, I just picked the ones that were my favorites and also what seemed to be the most popular.  Enjoy!

Most Views - 24 - Season 6.5 - 3:00 AM to 4:00 AM - This tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the last hours for Mike Fister and the rest of the Cadence executive team got the most total views as well as the largest number of views in a single day.

Most “Out on a Limb Post” - Birth of an EDA Revolution - My bold prediction of a revolution in EDA. This post was the first of several that covered topics like Cloud Computing, Software-as-a-Service, and other collaborative trends that will impact EDA in the upcoming year.

Most Commented Post - Gary Smith and EE Times Must Read This Blog! - This post incited 11 reader comments (including one from me). Interestingly, it was also one of my shortest posts. Hmmm … I think you all are trying to tell me something.  (Check out my new years resolutions in my next post).

Longest Comment on a Post - Who’s Right? Gary or Seth? - Elicited one comment that was 923 words long. Sheesh … The Gettysburg Address was only 272 words! Seriously, I appreciate the time Paul took to provide a thoughtful comment.

Most Plagiarized Post - Breaking News … Accellera Verification Working Group Forming - Someone liked the post so much that he/she felt compelled to grab a fake email address and repost a slightly modified version on comp.lang.verilog. Bizarre!

Most Popular Personal Post(s) -  Verizon Sucks! & ABC - Always Be Closing - The first post needs no explanation.  The latter describes how the California Public School System is training 2nd graders to cold call to raise funds to support education. This post also created somewhat of a border war between democrats in NoCal blaming lack of funding and republicans in Orange County calling for vouchers. I should have seen that coming.

Long Tail Post - My Favorite SNUG Presentation -References Mike Keating’s Discussion on Low Power at the 2008 Synopsys Users Group. Has been viewed more in the past 6 months than in the first month. (Unfortunately, Synopsys has redesigned their website and the presentation is no longer to be found by my cursory glance. What a shame. If someone at Synopsys knows where this now lives, please let us know.)

First “Real” Post -The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - My 3rd post overall, but the 1st one that I really put some time and energy and thought into.  Kinda like seeing the pilot for a TV show.

Almost Started a Fight Post - Airbags and Global Warming - By drawing an analogy between two difficult engineering problems, I almost started an international incident.  Comments include an emotional stab at “Mr. Bush” from the left and a dispassionate analysis from the right.

First “Hit A Nerve” Post - Is IP a 4-Letter Word? - This was my first post to illicit a strong set of your comments, calling for more transparency in the IP industry. I guess IP IS a 4 letter word!

That’s all folks.  Look for my New Years Resolutions later this week.

harry the ASIC guy

I recently caught up with one of my best friends whom I’ve known since Junior High School.  We were on the Math Team together in High School (yeah, we were geeks). We went to MIT together. We moved to Southern California after college together. We got our Masters degrees at USC together. And we both worked in the aerospace industry as our first jobs.

After several years at the Aerospace Corporation, Gary moved back to New York for family reasons. As it turned out, much of the engineering methods and mathematics used to analyze spacecraft attitude control stability (estimation theory stuff like Kalman Filters, etc.) were directly applicable to computational finance (or what is more recently been called financial engineering). With this knowledge, Gary landed a job at an investment bank and did very well, analyzing complex financial instruments to help clients hedge against risk (at least I think that’s what he did … I don’t really understand this stuff that well).

Shortly after September 11, Gary left the corporate world in order to spend more time with his young growing family and to chart his own course.  He performed some personal investing for private clients and eventually created and ran his own privately managed mutual fund. I know this was a big deal for him and he took it very seriously.  He always did painstaking research on companies he’d invest in and never took undue risks with his clients’ money.  As he told me the other day, “this is not a game”.

The first year or two the mutual fund did pretty well. Not great. Not terrible. But pretty good.

Early in 2008 I called Gary’s business line and the number was no longer in service. I left several messages at his home number but did not hear back. Finally, about a month and a half later I got a hold of Gary and asked him what was up. As it turns out, Gary had been really busy with all of the details of closing down the mutual fund he had started less than 2 years earlier. And here is where the story gets interesting.

Gary had been talking with lots of companies about their business and sensed from all of them that things were not good.  He also had a first-hand understanding of the financial markets and financial instruments that were to eventually be blamed for the real estate crisis. Whereas Gary had worked on creating these products to hedge against risk, others were using them to create risk and the ratings agency’s were covering it all up by putting AAA ratings on them.

All in all, Gary knew that there was going to be bad times coming up.  So what did he do?

• Did he paint a rosy picture for his clients so they would keep their money in his fund and he could continue to collect his management fee?
• Did he go out and get new investors in order to pay impressive returns to the older ones?
• Did he do something else to cover it up (after all, he knows enough to do that)?

No.  Gary did what it seems that very few in financial services would do.  Gary called up each of his clients and told the truth.  That there was going to be bad times and that he could not make money for them in this environment.  That the risk was too high.  And, even though he had put so much effort into building this fund, he was going to close it down for their benefit.

Many of his clients wanted him to keep going and were willing to assume the risk, but in the end he convinced them to cash most of it out and closed down the fund.

This was early in 2008, before the worst of the news and most of the crash occurred.  Now, looking back at that decision, Gary’s decision probably saved his client’s millions of dollars.  Some of them have called to thank him since then.

I think this is a great story about integrity and ethics and a great way to wash off the slime of 2008 and start 2009 clean and fresh.  If you have not yet chosen a new year’s resolution, let me suggest one.

Just once in 2009, do the right thing when you stand to lose.

harry the ASIC guy

I hope nobody at ASCAP is reading this. Because, if they are, they might be sending my kids to jail. First, some background.

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If you don’t know who ASCAP is, they are the the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. That sounds all fine and good … after all, I support the Arts. In fact, though, they are the ones who go door-to-door to coffee shops around the country shaking down small business owners to pay royalties on recorded music they play in their stores.  All to protect the artist, so he can get his 7% (the average) and the publisher can get his 93%.

Last Friday, we had our parent-teacher conference with our daughter’s 2nd grade teacher. During the conference, we inquired whatever became of the “music share day” that had been planned earlier this year. You see, my daughter, as well as other children in her class, were looking forward to bringing in their favorite music to share with their fellow students during an art class.

To my surprise, it seems that this idea was way out of line.  You see, evidently, ASCAP had previously stepped up to enforce the rights of its client artists (remember, the ones getting 7% of the licensing fees). They felt that a school was no place for children to learn about music unless they pay the licensing fees. So they sued the school board in order to protect their clients rights and stamp out any unauthorized and illicit learning that might be occurring without a valid license agreement. Bless their souls. And now the school board had adopted a clear guideline regarding copyrighted material … just say no.

Bottom line … no music in the art class.

Now, I don’t deny that the original composer deserves some royalty (again, the 7%), and I’m not advocating copyright infringement. But …  isn’t this a clear example where the music industry would be better off allowing schools to use copyrighted music. Not only is the use of this music in a classroom setting harmless to the industry, what better way to spread the music than allow elementary school students to bring in their favorite music. Look at what’s happened with Hannah Montana and High School Musical.

The EDA industry has long supported university education by providing courseware and tools for classroom instruction.  Sure, they want to support learning, but they also understand that students will be more likely to use the tools they learned in college when they get to industry. It just makes good business sense.

(As a side note, I would like to challenge the EDA industry, especially the big vendors, to extend the university offerings to those designers who have been recently affected by layoffs. Many of these professionals are in need of retraining and the ability to access these course materials and tools will help them find their next jobs. I think it makes good business sense, because these designers will learn the company’s tools and I am sure will be forever grateful for the helping hand. If you are employed by an EDA company and are reading this, please bring this up with your management.)

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That same evening, the YMCA had a Christmas Party where the kids got to perform some Christmas songs. Kiara participated in an Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song and Nate was the 12th day of Christmas. As I watched them, my thoughts went back to the copyright issue and I wondered to myself whether the YMCA had secured the public performance rights to these songs. I asked one of the YMCA leaders about it and sure enough, they did. Phew! In fact, she told me that the kids are so “with it” these days, they even know to ask the leaders “is it on the approved list?”

Thankfully, someone was careful to make sure they had done things by the book.  Otherwise, they’d have to bring out the paddy wagon to cart all these kids off to jail.

harry the ASIC guy

While growing up in the concrete jungle of New York (Brooklyn to be exact), I developed an interest in the natural world that I got to see too little of. I almost never missed a Sunday night episode of Marlon Perkins and Jim Fowler on Wild Kingdom.  And now, of course, there are dozens of regular shows on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and on and on and on.

If you’ve watched any of these shows then you know that there is a universal truth in nature. Where there is water, there will be life.  Find a stream and you will find water which nourishes plant life which is food for small animals which are food for larger animals. A stream becomes an oasis of life … a little ecosystem that supports itself and flourishes.

Once they find such an oasis, animals won’t leave on their own.   Even if there may be something better far away, it’s not worth the risk of the trip, because they have all they need. But sometimes nature intervenes. Perhaps there is a drought and the water dries up and the plants fade away. Then the animals have no choice but to look for “greener pastures”.

When animals were first domesticated, shepherds understood this principle and concerned themselves primarily with the care of the flock (imagine some pristine image of David). They knew that the sheep would not stray as long as they were provided for. Ranchers understood this as well, but eventually the they started to worry about other ranchers rustling cattle.  So they built fences to keep the cattle rustlers out and to keep their cattle from straying.

In business, companies have a choice … to focus their time and efforts on creating streams that satisfy their customers’ needs or to create fences to keep the customers in and the competition out. In EDA, the industry leaders have done both.

• More than a decade ago, Synopsys was an innovator by creating SolvIt! (now Solvnet), a 24/7/365 available knowledge database that enables uncountable designers to solve problems on the weekend or in the middle of the night. I have spoken to several Synopsys customers who cite Solvnet as one of the key reasons they stay with Synopsys tools. Solvnet is a stream.
• Just a few months ago, Cadence launched it’s Online User Community. Extended from it’s existing user forums, this community offers access to Cadence and designer tool expertise and interaction with those driving the direction of future tools. This is also a stream.
• Over the last several years, Synopsys has resisted customer requests to offer short-term (e.g. monthly or weekly) licenses for peak use, so that customers could match their license usage with peak needs. They feared that such an offering would jeopardize longer term sales and  lower switching costs for customers. This is a fence. (To be fair, Synopsys has recently started offering short-term e-licensing options)
• Cadence recently kicked dozens of competitors out of its Connections Program. This is a fence.

I’m not such an idealist to think that EDA companies will focus entirely on creating streams and not consider the competition.  That would be foolhardy. But there is a corporate culture, a corporate mission, that is either focused on the customer or focused on the competition.  That’s a key difference.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service for EDA. Some feel it is inevitable. Others point out all the barriers that exist.  Ultimately, I think it boils down to one simple question:

• Does the EDA industry as a whole, and do EDA companies individually, see their mission as creating streams or building fences?

If just one company sets as it’s mission to build a cloud computing stream, a SaaS oasis, to nourish the design community, then it’s going to happen. And designers and customers will come.

On the other hand, if the EDA industry focuses on building fences to lock customers into long-term agreements, to discourage interoperability, and to squash standardization efforts, then nothing will change and the industry will dry up and die.

It’s up to you. Go build a stream.

harry the ASIC guy

Considering what I’ve been hearing about the status of the Accellera VIP Subcommitee activity regarding OVM / VMM integration, I was rather surprised to see the following synchronized press releases from Mentor and Cadence yesterday:

• Mentor Solution for OVM Reuse of Legacy VMM Code
• Cadence Open Source OVM Adoption for VMM Users

As I understand, the Accellera VIP Subcommittee has just recently begun tackling the real crux issues regarding integrating the 2 methodologies such as:

• Casting of disparate types
• Synchronization of the simulation phases
• Message reporting

My speculation is that Mentor and Cadence are just now formally announcing the availability of the “fixed up” VMM code that had previously leaked out in a blog post by JL Gray.

Does anyone out there know what’s really in this release? It would be good to hear directly from the vendors on this.

How about OVM on VCS? Has anybody been able to get that working?

harry the ASIC guy

Thanks to Sean Murphy who alerted me to the 2 part piece (here and here) in EE Times on Cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service for EDA.

Those of you who have been reading this blog have already heard me discuss this topic (several times)and many of you have already added your thoughts to the conversation.  It looks like Daya Nadamuni and Gary Smith must either read my blog or have independently realized how the EDA industry is moving.  Either way, given Gary Smith’s and EE Times’ street cred, this will likely help to accelerate any move in that direction.

There is a lot more to be said, so look for my next post where I’ll address the EE Times articles directly.

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US.

harry the ASIC guy

Two weeks ago, at their annual Dreamforce Conference, Facebook and Salesforce.com announced that they had jointly developed technology that will integrate within pages on the popular social networking site the enterprise apps from the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) vendor. As an example of this integration, they demonstrated an app that can leverage the social aspects of Facebook to determine what “friends” on the service might be possible candidates for a job listing. As a result, recruiters can more easily reach a larger number of more qualified candidates and job seekers can be notified of potentially interesting job opportunities.  The app will automatically log where the referral came from and credit the friend with the referral.  Future integration with LinkedIn and MySpace should be forthcoming.

Besides improving the recruiting and job seeking process, there are 3 other aspects of this collaboration that are noteworthy and bring up possible applications in the EDA space.

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First, as stated in Denis Pombriant’s CRM blog,

“using Facebook’s widgets and up-to-date demographic data, companies can develop applications that leverage customer knowledge that enables them to better sponsor and understand communities of interest without the expensive and time-consuming effort of keeping a customer list current. By definition, a user of Facebook or other social site will keep his or her data current out of necessity, and this will move us a long way toward relieving the problems associated with aging lists and duplicate entries.”

Just as recruiters can find better potential job candidates, EDA vendors and design services companies can find better potential customers and clients. If you are a small EDA company that already uses their software, why not build an app on Force.com that links to Facebook or LinkedIn to find potential customers? Not for the purpose of spamming them (please!!!), but for the purpose of identifying those who might truly benefit from your products and services so you can contact them directly. Alternatively, if you’re not a Salesforce.com customer, I’m sure that James Colgan would point out that there is also the professional user community at Xuropa that can serve a similar purpose. You could contact your prospect as follows:

“Hi Joe. My name is Harry Gries and I’m an independent ASIC Methodology Consultant. I noticed from your public profile that you are currently designing an extremely complex ASICs with some leading edge technologies and tools. Personally, I have over 20 years experience (over 14 years in the EDA industry) working with advanced technologies and methodologies and have helped several clients identify the right tools to use and put together working methodologies. If you feel you might have need for someone like me, please contact me through my profile.  Or, if you feel someone else might be interested, please pass on my contact info. Thanks for your time, Harry”.

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The second interesting aspect is the increasingly acknowledged business application and utility of social media. Just today I reminisced with a co-worker about the early days of the Internet when web sites were blocked because employees would “waste time” surfing the net. He remarked that today, if we were to block access to the internet, we’d have legitimate outcries that employees could not get their job done. The internet has become indispensible, for googling a technical term, for accessing product information and users’ experiences, for keeping up-to-date on industry news and technical breakthroughs. I expect that social media sites, such as Facebook, will soon be acknowledged as just as indispensible as more traditional web sites today.

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The third and final  interesting aspect is how the #4 provider in the CRM industry is “upsetting the applecart”. Continuing from Denis Pombriant’s CRM blog,

“…it was not any of the larger and older (and richer) software giants that made the announcement. Instead, it was a relative newcomer yet to celebrate its 10th birthday, and with revenues only a fraction of Oracle, SAP, or Microsoft, that made the news.

So why didn’t Oracle, SAP, or Microsoft, come to this conclusion and build a product? A good question. The answer rests less on technology — any of them could develop the technology — and more on temperament. Of the four companies, only Salesforce.com has an on-demand or Software as a Service vision not clouded by the need to preserve a massive legacy code base and the considerable revenue stream it represents. In short, Salesforce.com did this because it could and because it has a clear understanding of the future of computing.”

Three big industry leaders … the need to preserve a revenue stream … sound familiar?

harry the ASIC guy

Coffee Shop

This past Saturday I went to grab a cup of coffee at the local mom-n-pop coffee shop that I really like. There were no stirrers so I told the server that they were out.

“Yeah, we’ve been out for a few days. You can use a straw”.

“Why don’t you just go to the Smart and Final or the Von’s 30 feet away and grab a box”, I asked.

“I’m just the server, that’s not my job”.

Electrician

On Sunday I was talking to Chuck, one of the other parents at the YMCA Adventure guides induction ceremony and boat regatta. Chuck works as an installer for AT&T and also does electrical jobs when he gets a chance.  He’s a hard worker, putting in six 12-14 hour days each week.

As we talked, I suggested that he could set out on his own, make more money and work less hours. Like Joe the Plumber.

“I don’t need the headaches. If something goes wrong on a job today, it’s not my problem. It’s my bosses problem. If I own a business, then it’s all my problem.  I’d rather someone just give me the job and I do what I’m told.”

My Client’s Large Company

I was trying to install Office Communicator the other day and there was something wrong with my account on the server. I called IT and the woman on the line tried to help me but could not figure out what was wrong.  So she closed my ticket, the one with her name on it, and opened a new one for a specialist in Office Communicator to look into it.

About a week later, someone else in IT called me up to help me with my issue.  He was able to figure out what was wrong, but lacked the permissions to make the fix.  So he closed out my ticket, the one with his name on it, and opened a new one for the person with permissions to fix the problem.

A few days later, I rebooted my laptop and Office Communicator was now working.  Later that day I got 3 emails from IT requesting me to fill out a short survey regarding the resolution of my issue.

A Person I Work With

The other day I urgently needed help to run an analysis on a chip I’m working on. So I asked one of the people on the team who knows how to do it quickly.

“That’s  not one of the things I’m responsible for.”

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Am I the only person not afflicted by the “not my job” disease? Has this really become such an ingrained part of American and corporate life?

I’m sorry, I just don’t think that way. If I see a problem, then it’s my problem.  Maybe I’m anal or a perfectionist or neurotic and maybe I need to let go.  But I’m just not wired that way. And I don’t understand people who are.

harry the ASIC guy

I spoke to a friend of mine at Cadence yesterday morning.

“I came in this morning and tried to log on and I couldn’t.  Turns out I must have mistyped my password, but I was worried there for a minute.”

That seems to sum up the mood at Cadence yesterday as the Turk made his way through the hallways of Cadence worldwide. “I think I’m going to go on vacation for the rest of the day”, my friend said later.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard it from friends, or read it in EE Times or on John Blyler’s blog, that Cadence cut “at least” 625 jobs or 12% of it’s workforce.  John Blyler’s sources say the impact will be closer to 1000 jobs once contractors and others are added in.

The speculation has been going on for several weeks including an interesting exchange on the Yahoo message boards as to how deeply and in what manner Cadence would cut.  Would they take out a scalpel and trim the fat from organizations across the board?  Or would they focus on key areas with technological advantage and hatchet off areas that were non-competitive? Cadence CTO Ted Vucurevich mocked the idea that Cadence would sell off any businesses. Yet, the official press release says that Cadence “emphasized those market segments where Cadence enjoys a leadership position, such as mixed-signal design, advanced verification, and low-power design”, implying it was de-emphasizing other businesses.

So … do we have any idea if these cuts were made with a scalpel or with a hatchet? Here is what I’ve been able to pick up from others regarding what Cadence is doing to save expenses:

• From the official 8-K report: “(e) Cadence has determined that no payment shall be made to Cadence’s named executive officers or the other participants in the Cadence Senior Executive Bonus Plan for performance in fiscal 2008.” I don’t think this eliminates the golden parachute, but at least it weighs a little less.
• At least some middle management was let go, including first line managers and some long-time Cadence employees. It seems they are trying to cut the “deadwood” like any organization does now and again but from the management side first. And the impact to the rank and file seems to be less than it could have been. Still, having gone through similar times at Synopsys before, I know that a lot of these people are experienced EDA veterans and good people to have in the organization and I wish them well.
• All, or a substantial part of their tech pubs was let go. (Makes sense since they can contract this out).
• IT was hit, though not sure how deep. (Can always move their infrastructure to the cloud or outsource IT - now wouldn’t that be ironic).
• Berkeley Labs was hit hard or perhaps even shut down (who needs research?)
• Their DFT R&D group was impacted, perhaps a signal as to their plans for this product line (just a bunch of IBMers anyway).

As yet, there is no indication that entire products are going away, but it’s still early.  Cadence has yet to speak to the investment community since the Fister resignation and delaying their earnings release due to the discovery of an “accounting error”. Personally, I think it will be painful for a company that has endeavored to provide a “complete flow”, to sell off a product and create a hole in that flow.  If they do sell off products, it will be around the edges, not in the core EDA flow.

Take a look at Gary Smith’s analysis from the time that Cadence bid to take over Mentor (can you believe it’s been  just over 4 months since the offer). The tools where Cadence has low market share and are possible targets for the hatchet:

• Design for Manufacturing
• Physical Verification
• Design For Test
• Static Timing Analysis
• Synthesis

What do you think? Can you see Cadence divesting any of these products?  Or do you think there are others that might go away? Which product would you definitely not let go?

Inquiring minds want to know….

harry the ASIC guy

Last Friday, I took the 45 minute drive from Torrance to Montrose to have coffee with Gary, a successful entrepreneur who is one of the founders of a fledgling IP company. I was introduced to Gary by a friend at Synopsys who suggested that I meet him because he’s had great success and has a lot of insight into how to run a successful business.

Gary brought along his partner, Art, and we had a very good conversation, almost an hour and a half. We discussed what I was working on, what his company was working on, and my revolutionary ideas about the EDA industry. Gary has a lot of experience and he provided some insights I had not heard before:

• How can EDA companies provide flexible pricing to smaller customers and not to their biggest customers?
• Software-as-a-Service works for cookie cutter processes like sales and HR and expense reports but not for customized processes like EDA tool flows

And he enforced some feedback that I had heard before:

• Why would a large EDA company want to cannibalize their long-term license sales with short-term licenses?
• It’s been tried before and failed.
• The guys with power have no reason to change the status quo.  They are holding 4 aces.

In short, my discussion with Gary amounted to this … your idea has tremendous value to the end user, the designer, the customer, the small startup or design services company … but the big boys, who have all the power, have no incentive to play ball, and every incentive to leave everything as it is. Gary never came out and said this verbatim, but the message was clear … “you don’t stand a chance!”

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As I drove back from my meeting with Gary, a little discouraged, yet grateful for the honest feedback, I turned on the audiobook version of Seth Godin’s new book Tribes : We Need You To Lead Us, which I wrote about in my last post. Somewhere around downtown LA, near Chinatown, I heard the following:

“All you need to know is 2 things.

• The first thing you need to know is that individuals have far more power than ever before in history. One person can change an industry. One person can declare war. One person can reinvent science or politics or technology.
• The second thing you need to know is that the only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that it’s worth doing. Faith that failure won’t destroy you.

… More and more people, good people, people on a mission, with ideas that matter, are stepping forward and making a difference … An individual, or a small group, has the power to turn an existing system on its head. Now, most of the time, we call heretics, leaders. The heretics are winning. You can, no, you must, join them.”

In short, Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” amounted to this … the technology that is available today via the internet (blogs, podcasts, social networks, etc, etc, etc)  provides the leverage to enable one person to initiate and lead a movement that can change the world. All that is necessary is to conquer the fear, to selflessly lead a tribe of people where they already want to go, to enable them to work together to achieve the goal. The message was clear … “you can do it!”

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So, who’s right, Gary or Seth? This will sound like a cop out, but they are both right.

Gary is right about all the challenges that exist to keep a change from happening.  In EDA, as in many industries, the status quo has tremendous inertia. Those who benefit from the status quo are usually those who have the most tangible power. And they will use that power to maintain the status quo. For all the reasons that Gary gave me.

And Seth is right, that despite all the reasons that change is hard to initiate, change can be ignited from a single spark. And long established industry giants can fall.

Look at the music industry, where the accessibility of music production and distribution capabilities has made the record companies increasingly irrelevant. Independent artists can self-produce and self-distribute their work, without have to sell their futures to the record companies.

It will be the same in the EDA industry. Independent EDA tool developers will be able to self-produce and self-distribute their work, without having to look to an acquisition by one of the “big 3″. I’d like to lead this movement, but I need to be honest … I’m a little scared.

• Scared for my reputation as a reasonable level headed person.
• Scared for my relationships with people in the EDA industry who stand to lose out from this change.
• Scared that I’ll waste several years chasing something that is never going to happen.

I’d like to know that I am not alone. That others will offer their support, their time, their effort, to make this happen. That we can build a Tribe that can change the industry.

If you agree with me … if you feel the same as I do … then let me know. Encourage me so I can encourage you.

And we’ll change the world. (Well, at least the EDA industry).

 harry the ASIC guy