harry … the ASIC guy

A few weeks ago I was talking with a former colleague about social media (or new media or web 2.0 or social networking or whatever you call it). He is now VP of sales at one of the companies in our industry and is contemplating starting a blog or doing something in social media and he wanted to get my thoughts. Early in the conversation, he asked “do executives really read blogs”?

An interesting question.

About a week ago, Forbes released a study entitled “The Rise of the Digital C-Suite - How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information” for which they surveyed 354 executives at US companies with annual sales > $1B. The results were both surprising and not surprising.

First, what was not surprising. The younger the executive, the more likely he was to use and count on the internet and social media as a resource for business related research. Whereas 56% of executives under 40 say they use Twitter daily or several times a week, only 17% of those over 50 use Twitter at all. The statistics are similarly skewed towards younger executive as regards usage of blogs, RSS feeds, social networks, and so on.

Also not surprising, the more mature social media technologies had the highest adoption rates. Irregardless of age, almost 100% of executives turn to the internet via search engines to do research before enlisting the help of their staff. The top areas of research are competitor analysis, trend analysis (customer, technology, societal, marketing, political), and corporate developments and news about mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures. Meanwhile, 95% found links from websites, blogs, and other online content to be valuable and 82% found guidance from contacts in online communities to be valuable.

So, what was surprising? Among executives under 40, 72% maintain a work related blog, with almost two-thirds updating it at least weekly. Twitter and RSS usage was very similar. Who knew that these busy executives could find time to keep up a blog or to “waste time” on Twitter? This trend will only increase as more of Generation Netscape and Generation Youtube find their way into the executive suite.

With similar goals, UberCEO.com scoured the Internet to determine how many of the Fortune 100 CEOs were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog. In stark contrast to the Forbes study, the results of their research indicated that of the 100 CEOs, only 19 had personal Facebook pages, 2 had Twitter accounts, 13 had LinkedIn accounts, 75 had Wikipedia pages, and none had a blog. What could account for this difference between the two studies?

Some of the difference is due to the demographics of the two studies. Whereas UberCEO considered only Fortune 100 CEOs, Forbes looked at executives of all ranks (only 18% were CEOs) and included much smaller companies with sales > $1B. (In fact, the Fortune 100th company had sales over $20B, 20x the limit for the Forbes survey). There seems to be a greater tendency for lower-level executives and those in smaller companies to use social media. Also, the CEOs in the larger Fortune 100 companies are more likely in that 50+ range which makes them less likely to participate in social media. I also think that the UberCEO survey undercounted since they did not contact anyone directly and missed many who may just listen in on blogs and Twitter and other social media and not yet participate as content producers.

A third more in-depth datapoint was provided by Ron Ploof in his recently released eBook on How Johnson and Johnson (Fortune #47) Does New Media. Despite being in a highly regulated industry where they had every excuse not to risk adopting social media, nonetheless JnJ has been very bold and successful with 2 blogs, a Youtube channel, a Twitter account, and now a Facebook page. Apparently, many of JnJ’s executives have adopted social media.

So, back to my colleague’s original question, “do executives really read blogs,” here’s what I think. Considering that we are in a high-tech industry with technology savvy execs, who tend to be younger than the average, with companies smaller than the typical Fortune 100 … Yes, the executives that you are likely trying to reach probably do read blogs. And maybe even use Twitter (see this list of business leaders and executives on Twitter) and have a Facebook page.

But that’s just me. What do you think? I’d especially be interested to hear from any executives out there as to what tools you use, why you find them useful, and how you use them.

harry the ASIC guy

My morning routine is pretty, well, routine.

Get up.  Wake the kids.

Check email.  Ask the kids to stop jumping on the couch.

Check Twitter. Tell the kids again to stop jumping on the couch.

Check my Google Reader. Glare at the kids with that “I’ve asked you for the last time” look.

You get the idea.

This Wednesday morning, somewhere in between conversations with my kids, walking the dog, and getting ready for work, I came across the following comment on a friend’s blog:

Ron, we are listening.

http://www.mentor.com/blogs

Ron Fuller
Web Manager, Mentor Graphics

For background, Ron Ploof is the guy who got the crazy idea almost 3 years ago that Synopsys should be doing something in this new world called social media. (Actually, I don’t think the term “social media” had even been coined back then). He evangelized this belief to the VP of Marketing at Synopsys and created for himself a job as Synopsys’ “New Media Evangelist” (actual title on his business card). He launched Synopsys’ first foray into social media, including podcasts, videos, and most prominently, blogs.

Synopsys’ success motivated Cadence to follow suit (something confided to me by Cadence’s former community manager). And it seems, according to the comment on Ron’s blog, it also motivated Mentor’s move into social media.

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I wanted to find out more about the Mentor blogs and I was able to set up some time to talk over lunch with Sonia Harrison at Mentor (see her sing at the Denali DAC party) . Sonia had helped me set up my previous interview with Paul Hofstadler and had extended me an invitation to attend the Mentor User2User conference (which, unfortunately, I could not attend). As it turns out, Sonia was the absolutely right person to talk to.

Even though I had only now become aware of Mentor blogs, Mentor had evidently coordinated their launch with the launch of their new website several months ago. Sonia was quite humble, but it seems that she was the driving force behind the blogs and Mentor’s presence in other social media like Twitter. She had been watching what was going on for some time, hesitant to jump in without a good plan, and now was the time.

According to Sonia, Mentor’s motivation for doing the blogs was to extend into a new media their “thought leadership” in the industry, to draw customers in to their website, and to exchange information with customers. Interestingly, Mentor did not hire an outside social media consultant or community manager like Cadence had. Rather, the project was homegrown. Sonia recruited various technical experts and others as bloggers. She developed “common sense” social media guidelines to make sure bloggers were informed of and played by social media rules (e.g. no sensitive or proprietary information, be polite, respect copyrights, give attribution).

According to Sonia, “one of the more difficult things was to get people to commit to blogging regularly. Writing takes time, it’s almost a full time job.” Despite this additional work burden, Mentor has no plans to bring in professional journalists as bloggers like Richard Goering at Cadence. And it doesn’t seem they need to. Simon Favre received a blog of the week award from System Level Design a few weeks ago, so they are doing quite well on their own.

Sonia does not have any specific measurable goals (page views, subscribers, etc.), which I think is a mistake, especially when her upper management comes asking for evidence that these efforts are paying off. My friend Ron likes to tell me that social media is the most measurable media ever and it’s a shame not to use the data.

I started playing with the site later in the afternoon and noticed a few things. First, when I added a comment to one of the blogs without registering, it did not show up right away, nor did I get a message that the comment was being moderated. It did show up later in the day, but it would be nice to at least be told that it was “awaiting moderation”. Still better, why moderate or require registration at all? The likelihood of getting inappropriate comments from engineering professionals is very low, and they can always be removed if need be. Moderation of comments will also kill a hot topic in its tracks. I’ve personally had the experience of publishing a new blog post late at night and waking up to several comments, some addressing other comments. Had I moderated the blog, none of those comments would have even showed up until later in the day.

Second, there was no way to enter a URL or blog address when leaving a comment. It is pretty standard practice to have this feature to allow readers to “check out” the person leaving the comment. Hopefully thay can add this.

On the positive side, the most important feature of a blog is the content and the content looks very good, especially the PCB blogs. Also, there is apparently no internal review or censorship of blog posts, so bloggers have the freedom to write whatever they want, within the social media guidelines of course.

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It’s been almost 3 years since Ron made his first pitch to his manager. Who would have thought that the Big 3 and many others would have adopted social media in such a short time. Meanwhile, my kids are still jumping on the couch.

GTG

harry the ASIC guy

I recall taking a course called The Counselor Salesperson when I was an AE at Synopsys. The course was very popular across the industry and was the basis for the book Win-Win Selling. It advocated a consultative approach to sales, one in which the salesperson tries to understand the customer’s problem first and provide a solution that he needs second. Sounds obvious, but how often do you encounter a salesperson who knows he has what you need and then tries to convince you that you have a problem?

One of the techniques in the process is called the “Magic Wand” wherein the salesperson asks the customer “What would it be like if …”. This open-ended type of question is designed to free the customer’s mind to imagine solutions that he’d otherwise not consider due to real or imagined constraints. That’s the type of question I asked last week when I asked: What would you do with 1000 CPU’s? And boy did it free your minds!

Before I go into the responses, you may be wondering what was my point in asking the question in the first place.  Well, not so surprisingly, I’m looking to understand better the possible applications of cloud computing to EDA and ASIC design. If a designer, design team, or company can affordably access a large number of CPUs for a short period of time, as needed, what would that mean? What would they be able to do with this magic wand that they would not even have thought of otherwise?

I received 8 separate responses, some of them dripping with humor, sarcasm, and even disdain. Good stuff! I’ve looked them over and noticed that they seem to fall into 4 groups, each of which highlights a different aspect or issue of this question.

“Rent Them Out”

Gabe Moretti had the best response along these lines, “(I’d) heat my house and pool while selling time to shivering engineers”. Jeremy Ralph of PDTi put some dollar value on the proposition, calculating that he could make $8.25M per month sub-licensing the licenses and CPUs. While Guarav Jalan pointed out that I’d need to also provide bandwidth to support this “pay-as-you-use” batch farm.

The opportunity is to aggregate users together to share hardware and software resources. If I buy a large quantity of hardware and software on a long-term basis at discounted rates, then I can rent it out on a shorter-term basis at higher rates and make money. The EDA company wins because they get a big sale at a low cost-of-sales. The customers win because they get access to tools on a pay-as-you-go basis at lower cost without a long-term commitment. And I win because I get to pocket the difference for taking the risk.

“Philanthropy”

One of the reasons that Karen Bartleson and I get along so well is that we’ve both been around the EDA industry for some time (we’ll leave it at that). As a result, we not only feel connected to the industry, but also some sense of responsibility to give back. Karen would train university student’s on designing SOCs. I’d train displaced workers on tools that can help them find a new job.

Even though this is not really a business model, I think it is still something that the EDA vendors should consider. Mentor is already very active in promoting it’s Displaced Worker Program. Autodesk and SolidWorks are giving away free licenses to the unemployed. This type of program should be universal. Using cloud computing resources is an easy way to make it happen without investing in lots of hardware.

(On a side note: PLEASE, PLEASE encourage anyone you know at Synopsys and Cadence to follow Mentor’s lead. Synopsys did this in 2001 and Cadence once had a “Retool-To-Work” program that was similar. I truly believe that both companies have that same sense of corporate responsibility as Mentor has, but for some reason they have not felt the urgency of the current situation. I am personally going to issue a daily challenge on Twitter to Synopsys and Cadence to follow suit until it happens. Please Retweet.)

“Do Nothing”

John Eaton pointed out that it is very difficult to use any additional capability offered as “pumpkinware” if you know it will evaporate within a month. It would take that long to set up a way to use it. And John McGehee stated that his client already has all the “beer, wine, and sangria” they can drink (New Yorkers - do you remember Beefsteak Charlie’s?), so he’d pass. John: Can you hook me up with your client ?

Seriously,  it certainly requires some planning to to take advantage of this type of horsepower. You don’t just fire off more simulations or synthesis runs or place and route jobs without a plan. For design teams that might have access to this type of capability, it’s important to figure out ahead of time how you will use it and for how long you will need it. If you will be running more sims, which sims will they be? How will you randomize them? How will you target them to the most risky parts of the design?

“Run Lots of Experiments”

Which brings us to Jeremy Ralph’s 2nd response. This one wins the prize as best response because it was well thought out and also addressed the intention of the magic wand question: what problem could you solve that you otherwise could not have solved? Jeremy would use the resources to explore many different candidate architectures for his IP (aka chiplet) and select the best one.

One of the key benefits of the cloud is that anyone can have affordable access to 1000 CPUs if they want it. If that is the case, what sorts of new approaches could be implemented by the EDA tools in addressing design challenges? Could we implement place and route on 1000 CPUs and have it finish in an hour on a 100M gate design? Could we partition formal verification problems into smaller problems and solve what was formerly the unsolvable? Could we run lots more simulations to find the one key bug that will kill our chip? The cloud opens up a whole new set of possibilities.

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I’ve learned a lot from your responses. Some were expected and some were not. That’s what’s fun about doing this type of research … finding the unexpected. I’ll definitely give it some thought.

harry the ASIC guy

I stopped by a lunchtime presentation yesterday given by the local Synopsys AC. He was updating my client on what was new in Design Compiler and other tools when he put up a slide that said something like this:

set_max_area 0 (now default setting)

For those who don’t know what this means, it tells the synthesis engine to try to make the design area as small as possible, which is obviously a desirable goal. Why would anyone ever want to set their area goal higher? If you’ve used Design Compiler before, you know that this has been somewhat of a running joke, a command that was in each and every synthesis script every written, as follows:

set_max_area 0

So it got me thinking. Were there any other artifacts of a bygone EDA era that were still were hanging around, like a running joke, that had served their purpose and needed to be put to rest. Of course there were, or I would not be writing this post. Here are 3:

1) Perpetual licenses. As Paul McClellan points out on his excellent EDA Graffiti blog, in the early days of EDA “the business model was the same business model as most hardware was sold: you bought the hardware, digitizers, screens and so on… And you paid an annual maintenance contract for them to keep it all running which was about 15-20% of the hardware cost per year.” EDA companies loved perpetual licenses for 2 reasons.

1. They got to recognize all the revenue for the purchase at the time of the sale, so they were able to show better numbers on the books quicker.
2. Once you “bought” the software, you only paid a small fee each year for maintenance. If you wanted to switch to another competitor’s tool, you’d need to pay that up-front perpetual license cost again, which was a real disincentive to switch. Basically, they could lock you in.

Even though most EDA companies have gone to a subscription license model, some still predominantly license software as perpetual. With the advent of short term licensing like Cadence’s eDaCard and Synopsys’ e-licensing, the perpetual model is as outdated as Sarah Palin.

2) Large direct sales teams. I need to be really careful here, because I worked in various customer facing roles at Synopsys for almost 15 years and I still have several friends who work in direct sales at various EDA companies. Many of them are very skilled and I don’t want to cause them to lose their jobs. But the fact is that all of us rely on “the Web” to get information on all things, including EDA tools, much more than we rely on salespeople. I’m part of the older generation (although I don’t feel or act that way), but the newer generation of customers views the internet in all its forms (static web pages, social networks, blogs, podcasts, twitter) like the air that they breath. They can’t live without it. And if you think they are going to want to have to schedule a visit from a “salesperson” to get access to a tool they are interested in, then you don’t have a clue about what these people expect. They expect to go to a web page, log in (maybe), and be off and running. And if your tool ain’t accessible that way, sorry, they’re not interested. Of course, that sounds shortsighted, but that’s they way it is and will be, like it or not.

This does not mean that some direct sales has no use or value. After all, a company is writing the check, not an individual with a credit card. And sophisticated customers will still (for now) want to install software and use it, so they will still need support. So there will still be a need for some direct sales and support, but much of the early stages of the sales process will move to the Web.

3)  Closed tool suites and solutions. As I stated in a previous post, most EDA companies seek to fence customers in rather than provide streams to nourish them. With all due regards to folks like Karen Bartleson and Dennis Brophy who have unselfishly worked to promote standards, we fall far short of the goals of the Cad Framework Initiative, which sought to enable true plug-n-play interoperability between EDA tools. It’s definitely getting better, due mostly to customer pressure. But we still have a long way to go before we have truly standard standards that enable collaboration between EDA suppliers. So, if you’re an EDA company, get with the standards.

That’s just 3. I’m sure there’s more. Let me know if you come up with others:

harry the ASIC guy

A few weeks ago, Seth Godin reminded us to be careful what you say online because Google never forgets.

Yesterday, Ron Ploof reminded us that we can “sift extraordinary insight out of ordinary” Twitter traffic if we know how to look.

So today, I thought I’d keep the ball rolling. I’d like to share with you an interesting Twitter thread concerning online communities for electronic design. It started last Friday and really heated up today. It’s amazing what you can find with a little effort

(Note: I have reversed the usual “most-recent-first” ordering of Twitter Tweets to make this easier to read.)

jlgrayFiddling around with the Cadence online lab on Xuropa… Still don’t get the community part of Xuropa but the VNC demo is cool.9:52 PM Mar 6th from TweetDeck

loucovey@jlgray do you get the community part of DVCon? How about DAC? Same thing w/o hotel rooms and sore feet.10:27 PM Mar 7th from twitterrific

jlgray@loucovey Not sure there are enough folks on Xuropa to have a robust community. Why not just use Twitter/Facebook/Verif Guild/OVM World…about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

jlgray@loucovey What’s on Xuropa to motivate me to build YASN (Yet Another Social Network)?about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

pmarriott@jlgray Too many communities cause fragmentation. I only have time for a few “quality” areas. I can’t be in all places at all timesabout 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

dave_59@pmarriott @jlgray I like Plaxo and LinkedIn tie-in to social networks. I can see where people are posting from one site. Needs more tie-insabout 13 hours ago from web

dltweeting@jlgray @loucovey don’t know if it’s xuropa or YASN, but I for one would like to see an independent online chip-design community evolve.about 12 hours ago from TweetDeck

pmarriott@dltweeting It’s hard to have any chip-design community that’s truly independent. Everyone has some kind of axe …about 11 hours ago from web

dltweeting@pmarriott maybe independent is too strong. how about “balanced”? something like DAC, EDAC, or GSA could potentially pull it off.about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck

pmarriott@dltweeting “Balanced” like USA Today editorials? Yuck. I want opinion, not PC mediocre rubbish. At least opinion spurs debateabout 10 hours ago from TweetDeck

dltweeting@pmarriott haha. not interested in PC rubbish either. balanced in that we get all perspectives. don’t need one view dominating convo.about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck

tommykelly@pmarriott “PC mediocre rubbish”? SO get a Mac d00d. PC. Mac. Geddit? … OK, maybe not.about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck

pmarriott@tommykelly Hope Steve Jobs is paying you commission Mr Macintoshabout 10 hours ago from TweetDeck

tommykelly@pmarriott The Lord Steve (May He Live Forever) doesn’t need to pay his willing minions. We work for love (and shiny objects).about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck

jlgray@dltweeting One could say there is a chip-design community building here which is controlled by no one!about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck

jlgray@pmarriott If past history holds, in a couple of weeks, @tommykelly will be pushing the benefits of PCs with input from Lord Gates :-).about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck

dltweeting@jlgray yes, but discovering voices/people -> too tedious. content disaggregated -> hard to follow convos. hashtags antiquated.about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

pmarriott@jlgray @tommykelly maybe a PC with Lord Torvalds is the best solution. No Micro$oft, no problem about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

dltweetinganyone ever try friendfeed?about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

tommykelly@dltweeting http://friendfeed.com/tommy… . Not completely sure yet what the point is, other than an excuse for more social notworking.about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

dltweeting@tommykelly me neither, but they have a friendfeed “room” … can aggregate tweets, blogs, pics, linkedin updates, etc.about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

john_m_ford@tommykelly: re: “social notworking” LOL!!about 7 hours ago from BeTwittered

dltweeting@john_m_ford @tommykelly hah! completely missed that! not working indeed!about 7 hours ago from TweetDeck

mentor_graphicsMentor Graphics Community FAQ http://tinyurl.com/atl8b3 #Mentorabout 4 hours ago from web

sfojamesSocial Networks Presage Professional Network Growth? http://bit.ly/8v8nVabout 3 hours ago from TweetDeck

jlgray@dltweeting But on the bright side, you get to channel William Shatner when writing short tweets!about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck

A friend just made me aware of a new “No EDA Tool Purchase” plan from Blue Pearl Software.

Hmmm …. sounds like Software-as-a-Service with none of the benefits for customer or vendor:

• Customer still needs to generate a PO. (By old school thinking, that’s a way to “qualify” the customer.  New school, that’s a barrier to customers actually trying your tool).
• Still need to install software at the customer’s site. (”What OS are you running? What version? Do you have the right version of ActiveTcl installed?” Ugh!!!)
• Still need to incur the cost of travel. (Nuff said)
• Have to get the work done in a 2-day fixed window (Is anything ever done in this short a timeframe? If not, then what?)
• Have to schedule to when the AE is available, so customer can’t do this on a moment’s notice. (How does a month from now sound … Oh … never mind … AE is out that week … how about the following week).
• Need to dedicate an AE full-time per customer. (What’s he do while the customer goes to meetings?)

Instead, why not:

• make the software available online
• let the designer upload his RTL and work from his desk
• let the AE work remotely from his office

No PO required. No installation issues. No travel. Easy to schedule and staff and extend if needed. (See what Xuropa is doing). Heck, why not just sell the software that way while you’re at it.

Maybe I’m missing something.  Maybe someone from Blue Pearl wants to explain what the thinking behind this is.

And if you’re interested in topics like this, stay tuned for more on the upcoming SaaS EDA Roundtable at DVCon.

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.

__________

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

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

Since Cadence decided to disappoint us by canceling their earnings announcement and conference call at the last minute, it gives me a chance to share some other cool stuff going on.

Seth Godin released his new book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us.  If you are a Seth Godin fan, then you’ll need to get this book.  If you don’t know who he is, then you need to get this book too. Trust me.  You can order it on Amazon, or download it on iTunes or get it for Free at Audible.com.

Thanks to Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen for pointing out a great Slideshare presentation on the credit crisis.

Last, on the topic of Software-as-a-Service for EDA, I wanted to point out a new demo on PDTi’s SpectaReg product. The demo is a little stiff, especially the pre-written copy. I’d rather hear the developer and a user speak honestly and passionately about why this is a cool product. But the fact that Jeremy Ralph is offering this product as SaaS makes him a kindred spirit, so I’ll cut him some slack. Good vibes!

That’s all for now.

harry the ASIC guy

During these last few weeks of the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, many of us have become all too familiar with the term “leverage” as it applies to those entities that used to be called investment banks.  That kind of leverage is very powerful and is also very dangerous, as we all found out.

There is a 2nd type of leverage that we engineers learned about in basic physics. As Archimedes once said, “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.”

But there is 3rd type of leverage that is “the power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc.” Some people call it ROI. I’d like to share with you three examples that recently came to my attention whereby one small EDA company in our industry is using the principles of leverage to try to “move the world”.

Productive EDA

I came across these guys through my Google Reader when the President, Jeremy Ralph, posted the following new product announcement to the OVM World blogs.  Jeremy cleverly used the power of OVM World to reach hundreds (thousands?) of potential customers.  And what did he invest? Only the time it took to write the blog post and put it up.

That’s leverage!

But wait, there’s more.  Jeremy caught my interest when he called the SpectaReg product a Web2.0 application, so I clicked to view the press release and was pleasantly surprised to see that their “products are available online, at lower cost, as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)”. Well, I had been fooled just last week into thinking that Cadence was completely entering the SaaS market, so I wanted to make sure. After all, as President George W. Bush once cautioned, “fool me once, shame on…shame on you…you fool me, you can’t get fooled again.” So I spoke to “President Ralph” on the phone, and indeed, this truly is a Web-based Software-as-a-Service, pay-per-use offering. Using the power of the internet and SaaS, his company is able to deploy its software to virtually any customer of any size anywhere, all from their office in Vancouver, BC.

That’s leverage!

But wait, there’s still more. I pointed Jeremy to xuropa.com, a recently launched online electronic design community and tradeshow platform, that I covered back in June and again three weeks ago. To his credit, Jeremy was already aware of Xuropa. I’m not sure where that will go, but his small EDA company would be able to reach even more potential customers worldwide and provide product training and evaluations through their online labs.

That’s leverage!

Leverage can be your friend. These new media business-to-business (B2B) strategies can enable smaller EDA companies like Productive EDA, which is exactly the type of company that I was considering when I wrote on my blog three weeks ago:

The pieces are coming together for a revolution in EDA. Like most revolutions, it is starting small, hardly noticed by the big guys on the block. In the next 5 years, it will change our industry forever by leveling the playing field, allowing smaller EDA companies to compete with larger ones, giving customers greater flexibility on how and when they access tools and which vendor’s tools they use.

Indeed, leverage can be your friend.

harry the ASIC guy