Jules - Re: "Altera/Synopsys announcement."
This will have an immense, long term positive effect for Altera. By long term, I mean beginning 9 to 12 months out - perhaps sooner if Altera and Synopsis have already been working on this cooperative arrangement.
For Altera, they are trying to sell their huge 10K100 chips with a "rated" density of 100,000 gates plus embedded ram cells. In order for designers to use these kinds of chips, they need to employ higher level design tools such as logic synthesis instead of the old "manual" logic and gate level design methodologies. Simply put, the designs that will go into these large devices are huge and complex, too intractible for manual design and verification techniques.
Synopsis will provide the logic synthesis (VHDL = Vhisic Hardware Description Language) and simulation/verification tools which allows designers to express their circuit designs in SOFTWARE, essentially like programming. The Synopsis software then "compiles" this software description and maps it into the physical hardware resources provided by the IC/chip, in this case, Altera's chips.
It is this mapping that is critical - to take a software description and efficiently and effectively map the logic into the resources of the physical device. To do this, Synopsis will need and be provided with intricate details of Altera's devices - the logic partitioning, interconnect resources, high speed paths, etc. Without a detailed knowledge of these intracacies, VHDL will not efficiently work with programmable (or any other) logic.
So, Synopsis and Altera will have plenty to gain as Altera's devices become increasingly popular.
Software sells hardware which sells more software, etc. The same game as CPUs.
Altera already has over 15,000 (maybe more) software development kits sold. Each installation represents another UPGRADE site, which will be of benefit to Synopsis and Altera as they climb up the high density ladder. Also, they are competing in real gate array territory so anybody with less than humongous gate array sizes will become a potential user of Altera devices - for both prototyping and low volume production.
In the past, Synopsis had good ties with Xilinx. Altera is now on a more even footing with Xilinx in the third party support area. Altera always had an NIH (Not Invented Here) attitude about third party suppport. Now they are moving in the direction that their customers wnat them to.
For your information, Altera's huge 10K100 is NOT a vapor chip. I have seen these and they are REAL and WORK. I believe this device may be the largest single chip piece of silicon (except CCDs) in production today.
Regarding Intel - I know how tempted you are to realize your profits. Good luck with your decision.
As for me, I am the ULTIMATE PIG. I'll hang in there in the hopes that Intel will reach $200 before it goes back to $50.
Paul |
