The EDA confessional is open: Cadence bags Clear Shape and Synopsys pokes “Cyclops’” eye out

Cooley called it—Cadence did buy Clear Shape.  It was interesting because the folks at BlazeDFM sent over a comment regarding some imminent Cadence announcement (but didn’t say what)  to our team before I even heard from Cadence that they had an official announcement in the works and long before Cadence even requested a briefing.

EDA is a funny business. It’s like a small town where everyone is in everyone else’s business…where companies seem to know most everything about their competitors. In this town, I’d prefer to be the priest hearing confessions, rather than the clueless spouse. Indeed, I have benefited quite a few times from “competitive knowledge.”

Here’s one it seems everyone in analog EDA knew before me and I hope it may be news to at least some of you. I learned this year that last year at DAC (2006) Synopsys demoed to select customers a custom layout tool, code named “Cyclops,” to go against Cadence’s long standing Virtuoso tool. Competitors said the tool flopped so badly that Synopsys scrapped the tool altogether, fired the team and has started tool development from scratch.

Synopsys president Chi-Foon Chan confirmed at this years DAC that indeed Synopsys did have a Virtuoso competitor in the works last year and scrapped it (he didn’t comment about the layoff part). “We’re not going to go after Cadence [Virtuoso] with a wet noodle,” Chan said.

With Magma pre announcing its soon to be announced Virtuoso competitor and Silicon Canvas seemingly doing well and all this Open pcell stuff in the air, the custom analog space is certainly starting to get interesting.

If you have any “competitive knowledge” about the custom analog tools area or any other EDA or FPGA related item, are feeling guilty about holding onto it and want to get it off your chest…the confessional is always open.(Editor’s note: please refrain from making cheeky comments referring to tainted priests, thanks)