Synopsys surprises Cadence, picks Mentor for high-end link

Electronic News, April 27, 1992 by Daniel Holden

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. -- Synopsys Inc. last week surprised Cadence Design Systems Inc. by choosing to link its entire suite of high-level design tools with Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Falcon framework.

"OpenDoor is a pretty straightforward program," said Kevin J. Kranen, senior product marketing manager for Synopsys. "They've got it down to a formula now. You give them a certain amount of money and you get the tools you need, with a deep level of integration.

"Cadence is not there yet. Their interface is still based on intermediate files with shallow integration. They're still trying to pull their pieces together, especially when it comes to the third-party development side," Mr. Kranen said.

Cadence vice president of sales and marketing Tony Zingale said he was "surprised and shocked" by the Synopsys manager's comments. "It's very interesting that Synopsys would be able to comment on the depth of our framework integration tools, since they've never seen or used them," he said.

Mr. Zingale said that Cadence has a long-term plan of basing its third-party integration efforts on standards developed by the CAD Framework Initiative, and that Cadence was hoping to work with Synopsys as a pilot program partner in that effort.

Mr. Zingale said Cadence is also in the process of developing a new third-party program based on the Connections program operated by Valid Logic Systems Inc., which Cadence recently acquired. But Synopsys said Mentor's program is available now in a highly developed form.

Mr. Zingale insisted that Cadence has "a rather robust extension language capability" in its proprietary Skill and C-Call software, which provide the ability to modify the user interface and to link calls directly into the third party's source code using the C language. Cadence's Communication Manager provides additional integration, albeit at a higher level, he added.

Mr. Kranen said the quality of third-party business relationships at Mentor and Cadence has also changed dramatically. "It's a reversal from the way it was 12 months ago," he said. "It's really started showing up in the external world in the past month or two.