Letters to the Editor -
** Letter No. 1 ** Peggy, I was surprised by the "Goose and Gander" article and the letter you got from the Denali executive defending his party. Were those things really happening at DAC? Were there women dancing on top of platforms? I had a really long conversation about feminism a couple of weeks ago with some friends. Several of them felt that women wearing revealing clothes is, in some ways, like people of color reclaiming derogatory racial slurs, and using those words to freely describe themselves in order to take back control of their situation and place in society. Not that dancing girls are on a crusade to reclaim their self-respect, but it is an interesting idea. Company executives can pay women to put on revealing clothes and dance on platforms, but they can only take away the self-respect of those women if the women allow it. Otherwise, it just doesn't work and it's the company executives who have given away their self-respect -- but for free -- which is something that's actually even shabbier than prostitution.
At least if you're going to let someone take away your self-respect, get paid something for it in return. Self-respect has a value in life just like everything else. Thanks, Anon
** Letter No. 1 ** Peggy, Gosh, this is fun. I am a great fan of Lauro Rizzatti, ever since I worked with him at Get2Chip. He is a supreme marketing mind, one of the few in EDA. But I do take exception to his caveat: "The EDA audience consists of engineers, the worst audience you can think of: skeptical, edging to cynical. And we all know that engineers hate marketing. The history of EDA is littered with failed startups that promoted '10X' improvements on whatever tool automated one or another step of the design cycle." While EDA believes that crowing about "10X" improvements comprises the soul of marketing, that ain't what I'm talking about. The core of marketing philosophy is "tell people what they want to hear and they will be willing to listen to what you want to say." EDA marketing practices rarely are concerned with the actual needs of the customer, relying primarily on assumptive needs. If they were to actually invest in real marketing, that is, in a conversation with their market, they would be able to deliver products that people would embrace. And while I know that everyone likes to think their particular interest group is "skeptical," engineers are just a susceptible to good marketing as anyone else. The proof is in what they have on their desktop. If superior technology swayed engineers, they would be designing SoCs on MACs. What makes chip designers so admirable is their ability to create masterpieces of complexity on such bug-laden computers. Lou Covey ** Letter No. 2 ** Hi Peggy, Economists talk about productivity increases of 3-8% in our workforce. If only we had it that easy!! Design sizes are maintaining their path along Moore’s law which predicts a doubling of design sizes every 18 months. This in fact is an understatement of system complexity as increasingly large amounts of capabilities are being put in the software side of the system. All of this creates added pressures on the design community, as there has not been a corresponding lengthening of the design cycle. Product lifetimes have actually been shrinking and so hitting the market window becomes imperative to being able to turn developments into profits for the company. If we cannot allow those who create product innovation to do so at a better and faster rate, then companies face the prospects of falling behind. Adding additional people is not an answer in most cases as larger teams create additional management and communications problems. Many innovations have been created that enhance productivity. Recent examples include design re-use and platform based approaches. Looking back at historical data and projecting into the future gives us another industry law. Simply stated: The productivity of the development team must double approximately every twelve months. Data provided by Dataquest at this year’s Design Automation Conference shows that the industry has not been keeping up with the necessary productivity improvements recently. Perhaps this is why there is so much talk about the need to move to the ESL level. It is quite clear though, that companies that continue to do well will be those who manage to keep their productivity rates rising faster than their competitors. Best regards, Brian Bailey ** Letter No. 1 ** Peggy, Funny you should mention Chris Rowen's book "Engineering the Complex SoC", as I took it with me to lunch yesterday, and enjoyed reading the forward and introductions, and browsing the chapters. The economics driver for lower cost, and lower power means that off-the-shelf processor solutions won't fill the bill, yet programmability is an essential component of today's SoC. Optimizing an architecture for cost and performance involves choices in partitioning the solution to software and hardware, and deciding between fixed and reconfigurable IP. Chris is to be commended for tackling this complex subject and for showing how we can create the next generation of SoC designs without breaking the bank.
Thanks, Graham Bell ** Letter No. 1 ** Hi Peggy, I just read your article on "C" words, so I'd like to give you one ... congratulations. The article really touched me. Thanks, Anon ** Letter No. 2 ** Peggy, Your article "The C Word" brought me to both tears and laughter. In my family my nom and dad both had melanomas and survived. My dad is still alive and well after his surgery for prostate cancer, though others in our extended family, like my beloved cousin, did not survive their cancers. Where can I send my donation?Warm Regards, Anon [Editor's Note: To contribute to research into multiple myeloma, please see: http://myelomasource.org/get_involved.htm.]** Letter No. 1 ** Peggy, I had to try my hand at the news quiz. My submission is as follows: I. Xilinx acquired Hier Design this year. The press release is dated June 7. II. Mike Kaskowitz became president of the VSI Alliance in 2003. III. This marks the first time I've seen the term "break-up fee", but it's obvious that no one wants to get burned in light of Synopsys' botched acquisition of Monolithic System Technology, Inc. Even that agreement had a break-up fee, but it appears the lawyers decided that $10 million just isn't enough. The current thinking seems to be: "Let's increase the penalty until it's too painful for anyone to back out." IV. Quotes: Note that the rules must be followed: The "acquired" quotes always before the "acquirer" quotes, ordered by rank within each company. But c'mon - does it really matter which quote was attributed to which person? Most press release quotes seem to be written by marketing groups, hopefully with a sign-off by the named parties. I'd argue that these quotes, with minor edits, could be used in a press release for any acquisition in any industry. It's rare to see even a hint of a leader's personality in a press release quote. Is this a sign of too little personality, or too few leaders? V. Middle initials: Mark R. Templeton & Lucio L. Lanza -- I think Mark's middle name is probably Rod, but couldn't confirm it. I won't even guess what the "L" is for. VI. How exactly does one pronounce "Avant!" ... ? One pronounces "Avant!" exactly as it appears it should be pronounced, which is "Avanti." The trailing "i" is clearly upside-down, and is only there to annoy English teachers who believe that the incorporation of punctuation as a part of language, instead of the notation of structure in language, is a sign of the end of civilization. This began with the promotion of the "period" to the rank of "dot" at the beginning of the Internet era, and the "@" symbol's transition from lowly shorthand to prominent division between individual and organization. I don't even want to know what my high school English teacher thinks instant messaging will do to our language. Best regards, Phil Lindberg ** Letter No. 2 ** Hi Peggy, Is there a prize for sending in Lucio Lanza's TWO middle names? Let me know if I'm the first to answer correctly ... Lucio Luigi Simeone Lanza! Abbie Kendall ************* [Editor's Note: For submitting the winning answers, surely both Phil & Abbie will be thrilled to learn they've won a year's free subscription to EDA Confidential.] *************
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