This week's People includes an interview with Bernie Aronson and Gary Meyers from Synplicity.

Stelar Tools, Inc. announced Robert Grossman has been named Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Grossman comes to Stelar from Novas Software. He has 25+ years of sales and marketing experience with various EDA companies including Tharas Systems, Vast Systems, and Mentor Graphics. Over the course of his career, he has been involved in a number of start-ups, from early stages through to acquisition or IPO. Grossman has a B.E. from Cooper Union University and an MSEE from the University of Massachusetts.

FishTail Design Automation, Inc. announced the signing of exclusive distribution agreements with both Saros Technology Ltd. in Europe and Advinno Technologies in Southeast Asia. The company already works with SC HighTech in Japan. The company also has direct sales and support offices in the United States. The distributors will provide customers with front-line sales and support in their regions.

Ajay Daga, founder and CEO of FishTail, is quoted: "We view Europe and Southeast Asia as significant growth opportunities and both Saros and Advinno have a solid customer base in their regions and in-depth knowledge of the growing problems related to timing closure."

Synplicity Inc. last week named Gary Meyers to be President and COO - a newly created role at the company. He will continue to report to CEO Bernie Aronson. Meyers has been Vice President for Worldwide Sales at the company. Previously, he was at LSI Logic, serving in various managerial roles, and prior to LSI was an ASIC designer at TRW (now Northrop Grumman). Meyers has an MBA from UCLA and a BSEE from the University of Maryland.

I had a chance to speak by phone with Gary Meyers and Bernie Aronson on Wednesday, September 8th. They were sitting in the Synplicity offices in Sunnyvale, CA.

Q: Why make this move right now?

Bernie: "I've been here in 7 years and I'm ready for a change. Gary's a fantastic guy and people were trying to hire him right and left. We needed to give him more responsibility before he left for somewhere else. You can't keep them down in the sticks, after they've seen Paris."

Q: Is Synplicity the sticks or Paris?

Bernie: "Neither, but Gary's been here for six and a half years and he's ready for a bigger challenge. We're doing very well and this is a great time to make this change, rather than after disaster strikes [as so many companies do]."

Q: How does the company benefit from this move?

Bernie: "When I'm gone, there will be continuity."

Q: When are you leaving?

Bernie: "Within the next six months. I'm off to do a start-up or something different. There are 280 people here now and I usually join a company when there's only about 20 or so employees."

Gary: "I've been with the company for a long time, and I've known Bernie was planning to take on a different challenge. [Up until now], I've been managing the entire worldwide sales team and helping to move company in the right direction. Also, I'm a known quantity here, so there no surprises and people at the company have been very supportive of the change. From the employees' perspective, it's a nice transition and opportunity for somebody here to have a bigger challenge."

"And, Bernie's not leaving the company in a lurch. We've been meeting with all of the analysts and investors, so that I can get to know them because in the past I haven't had that much involvement with that part of the business."

Bernie: "We've seen 20 investors all in a short amount of time. We just got back from the East Coast where we had lobster in Boston and deli in New York. [Gary may be working hard], but I'm feeding him well."

Q: So who gets the corner office now?

Bernie: "We don't have corner offices here at Synplicity. The corner offices are saved for conference rooms."

Gary: "We're very egalitarian here. Everybody who needs an office has the same size office."

Q: What does the change mean on a day-to-day basis for the company in 25 words or less?

Bernie: "We do things together, so I don't know that anybody will notice a change. Gary will probably improve things, however, with a fresh outlook."

Gary: "I'm still getting my arms around this job, so I can't summarize it in 25 words. First I need to replace myself in the VP of Sales role, and we're also searching right now for a VP of Marketing. And as you could tell from our recent earnings call, we have made some [performance] commitments to Wall Street, so we need to execute there. That's what I'll be working on."

"Otherwise, I don't see any significant changes from before. Remember we just came off of three consecutive record quarters at a time when the rest of the EDA and semiconductor industries were not doing so well. There are some very exciting opportunities in structured ASICs and FPGAs, and our balance sheet is very clean right now."

Q: Is there competition between the structured ASIC and FPGA markets right now?

Gary: "In some applications, ASIC technologies and FPGA technologies compete. In some, they don't. It's really application driven - some projects are right for FPGAs and some are right for ASICs or structured ASICs. Customers can see all three implementation vehicles and decide for themselves. [Clearly we're seeing] the number of design starts growing in structured ASICs and FPGAs, and the number of ASIC starts declining. [At the same time], the ASIC designs are getting larger and more complex."

Q: How do you define a structured ASIC?

Gary: "A structured ASIC is still an ASIC, and customers don't have the FPGA option to change programming of the device once it's manufactured. On the other hand, a lot of the current issues with cell-based designs are resolved in a structured ASIC - deep-submicron issues, power and test issues, and the various timing issues that we particularly focus on here."

Q: Do customers ask you for advice as to which technology to go with on a particular project?

Gary: "Customers do ask us about the solutions we offer, but it's up to them as to whether they go with an FPGA instead of an ASIC or a structured ASIC. We're [involved] right now in two major partnerships, one with LSI Logic and one with NEC, and we support a variety of different structured ASICs."

"Keep in mind, this market is still pretty new and we're just now starting to see things ramp up. We are seeing various vendors in the structured ASIC market who have a lot of different offerings. NEC is very different from LSI, for instance, in the number of layers of metal, the types of memories, and so forth. An individual's going to look at the technologies and decide, project by project, does this meet my needs. Each solution is unique with different advantages. [Meanwhile], we're not out in the field pushing one FPGA vendor versus another."

Q: What about the question that always asked about competing with the free tools from the FPGA vendors?

Gary: "You always have competition out there, free or otherwise. We've been competing against vendors' tools for many years. There's no big story here. The way we win customers and the reason we're the number one provider is because we provide the best quality tools and results."

"Ultimately, if somebody needs better performance and the vendor tools don't get them there, we've got the tools to solve it. What we're offering is definitely worth the price. We also offer FPGA vendor neutrality - and that's a powerful argument on our side."

Q: So when will you allow yourselves to be purchased by one of the large FPGA vendors or somebody in the structured ASIC market?

Bernie [laughing]: "When they offer us enough money."

Q: How much is that?

Bernie: "As much as possible!"