Tick Tock—in May 2007 Cadence's Federal Trade Commission ordered "openness" goes off the clock; and A HUGE EDA release
On Monday you will see what I consider a huge release in the custom analog and digital tool space. HUGE. I can't tell you what it is because I've sworn to honor an embargo but it has to do with Cadence's refusal to give competitors full, free and equal access to its PCell custom and analog cell description language SKILL (the announcement is NOT going to be from Cadence).
On Thursday November 9th, I moderated a panel on the need for a standard open process data kit. THE key roadblock in allowing this to happen has been Cadence not allowing its competitors full, free and equal access to SKILL.
So a day or so before the panel, I was thinking of how I should open the session. It came to me: why don't I go in to the fact that opening up proprietary formats has proven to be a good thing? I was thinking the prime example would be how Cadence opening up LEF and DEF back in the late '90s saved their bacon in 2001.
In 2001, Synopsys had just acquired Avanti and for the first time in its history Synopsys had taken the lead from Cadence. Synopsys already had the leading synthesis tool, and by acquiring Avanti gained what was considered at the time to be the leading place and route tools. Thus, in the words of Gary Smith, chief EDA analyst then at Gartner (and now on his own), Synopsys owned the "power user's" tool flow.
Cadence was developing its own tools (Integration Ensemble) and it didn't work out. To catch up, Cadence had to use a lot of the money it had gained from the Avanti criminal restitution hearing to go on a last-minute EDA startup buying spree—buying Silicon Perspectives, Plato, Get2Chip and a bunch of other companies to fill out the flow. Indeed, a quarter or two later, Cadence was back to number one.
Cadence couldn't have cobbled those newly acquired tools into a flow had it not released LEF/DEF. Of course, some may argue that releasing LEF/DEF got them into trouble in the first place, but remember Avanti and Synopsys were still gaining momentum without it.
Anyway, it's commonly held that Cadence released LEF and DEF not simply because they are nice folks but because the company was ordered to do so by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission as a provision for approving Cadence's acquisition of Cooper & Chyan Technologies. So, for reference in the panel, I wanted to know when that FTC order took place.
I was a completely green editor at Integrated System Design magazine back then and didn't cover newsy items – especially this. Even when I was doing investigative reporting for EE Times, I never checked it out because analog and full custom tools were someone else's beat.
But in looking at this on the FTC website—different orders, FTC officials arguments, agreements and settlements, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't find any direct order that said Cadence must open LEF and DEF. In fact the only format I see referenced in this vein in the FTC documents is SKILL.
Check out this text from the FTC's "AGREEMENT CONTAINING CONSENT ORDER"
"Respondent shall permit developers of Commercial Integrated Circuit Routing Tools to participate in Independent Software Interface Programs. The terms by which developers of Commercial Integrated Circuit Routing Tools participate in Respondent's Independent Software Interface Programs shall be no less favorable than the terms applicable to any other participants in Respondent's Independent Software Interface Programs."
"The purpose of this Paragraph II is to enable independent software developers to develop and sell Integrated Circuit Routing Tools for use in conjunction with Respondent's Integrated Circuit Design Tools, in competition with Integrated Circuit Routing Tools offered by Respondent, and to remedy the lessening of competition resulting from the proposed Acquisition as alleged in the Commission's Complaint."
Now check out how the FTC defines "Independent Software Interface Programs" in the agreement:
"'Independent Software Interface Programs' means Respondent's Connections Program, any successor program thereto, or other licensing program, promotional program or other arrangement by which Respondent enables independent software developers to provide interfaces to Respondent's Integrated Circuit Design Tools (including, e.g., licenses to the SKILL Programming Language, the SKILL Development Environment, the Virtuoso Layout Editor, and other intellectual property and documentation made available through such programs)."
Is SKILL open? Is Cadence complying with the FTC order? Is Cadence violating that order? Are there documents or agreements I'm not seeing here that got rid of all that language that says SKILL has to be open?
I'm not sure. So I put out a call on at noon Wednesday to Smith McKeithan, Cadence's General Council, who was named in those 1997 FTC documents, and his admin left a voicemail later that evening saying he was on vacation through Thanksgiving. It says in the same FTC agreement that every year Cadence is supposed to produce a report to the FTC demonstrating that it is complying with the agreement. These reports don't seem to be available on the site.
What's interesting and a bit disturbing to note too is that in the same FTC agreement it says Cadence has to comply with this agreement (to offer free, open and equal access to SKILL—the way I read it) for a period of 10 years. That essentially means that Cadence is only bound to this FTC agreement until some time in 2007. After that time, Cadence has no obligation to be free and open, and it can disconnect the rest of the industry from its Connections program.
I'm wondering if you think Cadence is free and open now, given its behavior with SKILL and the Power Forward power standard (which by my reading is used by a router as well), then what do you think it will be like when Cadence doesn’t have to be free and open by mandate? I'm hoping this is just a phase really. Cadence has a ton of good folks.
I imagine Cadence has a lot to respond to here and I'm free and willing to stand corrected. I want to know more about this and want to know if the FTC is aware of it. Certainly Cadence's own competitors on the panel weren't aware of it.
