Thursday, August 3, 2006

Reader Comments

at 8/3/2006 3:11:49 PM, stabie said:
Dracula was developed by ECAD before SDA/ECAD merged to be cadence, so don't think you can count Dracula either.

at 8/3/2006 4:04:51 PM, Michael Santarini said:
Thanks bud, what was the last tool--sorry, successful tool--Cadence developed entirely in house?

at 8/3/2006 4:18:11 PM, stabie said:
I'm not aware of any I'd call successful that were not acquistions. I can't knock their methods though, they have become #1 (using revenue as the benchmark) using acquisitions.

at 8/3/2006 5:28:22 PM, David said:
If they have always done well with the acquisition and integration strategy, why are they trying to poke fun at building technologies in-house? Furthermore, what's the point of the PR conspiracy -- claiming to do things in-house that were actually done down the street. I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, but it seems to me that Cadence has probably recieved a lot of flack from the industry for their traditional M&A strategy; probably seen as a lazy way of expanding the company and increasing revenues. They are likely responding to the criticism by focusing their PR messaging on non-existant in-house accomplishments, while the company as a whole continues with the M&A strategy to actually produce the engineering that has led to their success so far. As much as I could crtisize Cadence for lying, I would also critisize the industry for not giving credit where credit is due. Successfully acquiring and integrating tools isn't neccessarily that much easier or less rewarding than actually creating them from scratch. There's my shot in the dark.... Anyone think I hit a target?

at 8/3/2006 5:53:18 PM, Michael Santarini said:
Hi David, I've always thought that the growth by acquisition strategy works for EDA and is something the industry should embrace. The fact of the matter is the big vendors don't embrace it let alone like it--they hate the fact that some of their folks go outside the company and sell them tools they should have built when they were employees. Some evidently take technology with them and that causes lawsuits. To stop all of this, the big guys have basically sent a message to the Venture Capital (VC) community that the days of acquiring a startup for 10x its revenue are over and the most they are going to get is 2 or 3x for your little startup. I hear that's scared off a lot of bigger VC's in the Valley and reduced the overall VC funding of EDA startups in recent times. But there are a bunch of Angel investors and specialized VCs such as Lucio Lanza whom are more than happy to get that kind of return or to wait things out until the big guys hit the panic button and need next gen tools. I've been hearing that a lot of the EDA funding is coming from outside of Sand Hill Road, way out, even Europe, these days. Innovation from startups is the way of EDA—though the big firms do great sometimes—PrimeTime, Physical Compiler, Calibre, Catapult-C, are examples…

at 8/4/2006 10:20:19 AM, Chuji said:
Pretty sneaky stuff there by Cadence - definately puts a ding for their reputation in my mind.

at 8/11/2006 11:39:22 AM, Mike said:
The last successful tools I know of that Cadence developed were QPlace and QRoute (which, I believe, later became warp), which replaced the Tangent-developed "Place" (Group and GPlace were a stop-gap on the way to QPlace) and GRoute/FRoute. They were developed in the 1993-94 timeframe, and amusingly, Mitch Igusa (later of Avant! fame) was the primary qroute guy and Limin He (later of Plato) was qplace. 12 years ago, and Cadence was known then as a "sales and marketing" organization.

at 8/15/2006 5:27:20 PM, stabie said:
I definitely smell something with cadence's latest announcement of "no outside vendors" at their users group. If I were DAC, I'd alter the rules so that if you buy someone, you don't get their booth. When cadence realizes the deep hole they are digging, they will buy their way out of it if they can. If I were the DAC committee, I'd make sure they have to pay for it.

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