This is not good for EDA startup ecosystem. If I were an EDA customer, I’d think twice about going with a non-synopsys/cadence solution: Your favorite tool’s support may halt anytime with a takeover from the big guys.

It used to be different, most acquisitions were positive. The intent used to be to award the founders, keep the tools and grow with them. Negative acquisitions will hurt EDA growth and customers in the long run.

For Magma customers it’s uncertainity in the short term and increased costs in the long term (both not desirable!). If I were a magma customer, I would be jumping ship right now as there is no point in continuing with magma platform with an uncertain future and uncertain support.

It’s bad for magma employees because they could in all likely hood lose their jobs. (a job loss doesn’t sound too attractive when you compare it to an increased share price for an ordinary magma employee, who has his hands on a few hundred shares).

For Rajeev, it’s a pretty good deal as he can dispose off the hundreds of thousands of shares he might be holding on to for years together, not making him money and SNPS will clear all LAVA debts.

Its good for EDA industry as a new start up might emerge. But we live in uncertain times where VC money has completely dried up.

Rajeev will have the money to start something soon though
Keep an eye out for him over the next few years. For all you know the new tool might be named “Tsunami”.

Sometimes I wish I could just use open source!!

The challenge in EDA is that by far the most expensive resources are the software licenses. Unless the EDA ISV’s agree to accept subscription prices, there is no way to create the “illusion” of infinite resources” This is something that will happen, or it’s about to happen now. This restriction is artificial and a cloud EDA will reward the ISV’s as much as the users.

A more interesting question is what are some cloud business models that would force a more rapid competitive response.

Here’s the link to the memo. In a nutshell, the memo announces that “the DCS division [Design Creation] will cease to exist as a standalone entity”. Catapult-C is given to Calypto in exchange to a majority shareholder in the company.

The memo also says that the FPGA synthesis tool, Precision-RTL, is moved from DCS to BSD, which is essential the PCB business. This is odd as a more natural destination would have been emulation. Looks to me that people in the emulation business feel better off without Precision RTL. That does not sound good for the future of FPGA synthesis in Mentor.

This transaction can be characterized as a ‘spin-out-and-merger’ and in a memo leaked to John Cooley’s Deep Chip, MGC will have a controlling stake in new Calypto with the Catapult C asset and existing equity from a strategic investment. In an EE Times piece by Clive ‘Max’ Maxfield, Brian Baily commented that this will enable MGC to block any attempts to acquire Calypto by others (apparently, Cadence took a shot last year) but not have to expend any cash itself to acquire the firm.

Mentor retains Vista, from the acquisition of Summit Design, and has other technologies in its portfolio for ESL (Platform Express and Perspecta, from the IP-XACT part of the spectrum) on the design creation end. While I should be reluctant to comment on competitors, I would like to make the observation that uniting Mentor’s design creation platforms into their Embedded Systems unit configures them to line up against ESL virtual platform efforts at Synopsys and Cadence. There is more to ESL than HLS.

By separating Catapult C into Calypto, it gives that team some neutrality when dealing with design creation platforms from other companies. They were housed in the same division as Vista and Precision, Mentor’s premium FPGA synthesis tool, which resulted in some hesitation on the part of non-Mentor partners.

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Disclaimer: as with all my past contributions to your blog, this is a personal opinion, etc.