Move to NT slow as Unix holds own in EDA world

Electronic News, August 18, 1997 by Chad Fasca

The king is dead. Long live the king. At least that is what the perception among electronic design automation (EDA) watchers has been for the past two years. Unix is dead. Windows NT is the new king. But is it?

Two years after analysts fitted NT for the crown, the Microsoft operating system has picked up a few new members of its court with the rollout of EDA tools from the likes of EDA industry leader Cadence Design Systems and an increase in unit sales relative to Unix. Yet, Unix persists. And this does not surprise many industry executives.

"Everyone wants to take a data point or two, and declare that Unix is dead; I am actually astounded by the people predicting this," said Mark Miller, VP of marketing for Synchronicity.

Even recent EDA market studies have respondents pegging Windows NT in the role of usurper to the Unix throne by 1998. But market statistics released by the EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service reveal a more sober reality. From 1995 to 1996, the percentage total for new Unix license revenue went from 94 percent in 1995 to 93 percent in 1996. At the same time, the percentage for PC license revenues went from 6 percent to 7 percent for the corresponding period. The percentage total of unit sales changed by only 1 percent as well, with Unix changing from 62 percent in 1995 to 61 percent in 1996. PC licenses went from 38 percent to 39 percent in the same period.

The analysts have not been wrong, NT is encroaching on Unix. For the first time, PC unit sales exceeded Unix unit sales in a quarter during the fourth quarter of 1996, which saw a sales jump from $23 million to $39 million in worldwide PC revenue, according to EDA Consortium. That has drawn the attention of many analysts, including Jennifer Smith, CAD/CAM analyst for Robertson, Stephens & Co. in San Francisco. Despite figures in favor of Unix for all of 1996, Ms. Smith sees the fourth quarter of 1996 as a significant indicator that the balance has shifted toward NT. In the fourth quarter, the numbers traditionally associated with Unix and PC unit sales, respectively, reversed as PC/NT licenses (17,244 units) surpassed Unix licenses (13,904 units). Overall, the PC/NT platform again gained on Unix platform sales by a margin of approximately 10,000 from approximately 20,000 behind in 1995, according to Ms. Smith.

Another Robertson, Stephens research analyst, Bret Rekas, last week initiated coverage on Sun Microsystems with a "buy" rating, emphatically stating that "Unix is not dead!"

"Although shipments of Unix workstations are stagnant, sales of Unix servers are growing at 25 percent," Mr. Rekas said. He also contended that Windows NT will not be able to challenge Unix in enterprise computing environments before the end of the decade.

"In our view, Sun is highly unlikely to sell NT-based systems, but will 'embrace and extend' NT by making it easier to manage large, heterogeneous networks containing Wintel workstations and services," Mr. Rekas said.

"There will be an NT on everyone's desktop. And there will be servers which will house certain applications, more compute-intensive place-and-route tools and high-end synthesis. It is still different from where it has been with Unix as the predominant platform," said Ms. Smith. "It hasn't happened yet (the industry shift to NT), but we have seen more and more momentum going that way."

However, the much-talked-about migration is still coming slowly. While the EDA Consortium has discontinued tracking units sold, citing difficulties in maintaining accurate information because of various licensing structures like floating and time-based licenses, figures for the first quarter of 1997 do not show the Wintel revolution enveloping EDA. Worldwide DOS & Windows revenues actually dropped for the first quarter from $39 million the preceding quarter to $32 million for the first quarter of 1997, an 18 percent decrease. Worldwide Unix license revenues dipped as well, from $360 million to $341 million, a 5.2 percent decrease from the fourth quarter of 1996.

"There are a number of problems holding NT back, first being the availability of EDA software. Most (packages) are not available on NT yet. And NT still appears to be more fragile at this point than Unix," said Jean-Pierre Braun, president and CEO of Escalade.

It really comes down to design tools, according to Yatin Trivedi, principal and co-founder of Seva Technology. "The infrastructure of the whole design process needs to be migrated to PCs," said Mr. Trivedi, who added that "unless the whole design flow is migrated to PCs, the Unix platform is going to be there, sticking its thorn (in NT's side). You can't just put out a few (tools on NT)." Mike Beard, president of Beaverton, Ore.-based Willamette HDL, agrees. "The tools are not readily available on NT. The Synopsys tools aren't there. The Chrysalis tools aren't there," he said.

But some of the fault lies with familiarity. One big issue that Jerry Frenkil, VP of low-power design at Sente, said will be the determining factor in high-end adoption of NT-based PCs is trust, specifically "tools they trust, that will give them the right answer and reliably run. And right now, those tools run under Unix." With Unix, Mr. Frenkil says, "It works. NT doesn't have the history yet. (Design engineers) have to be confident that NT is not going to die after three days of simulation."