Conway admittedly has made a great deal of money as an early investor in some major internet successes (Facebook and Twiiter, e.g.)  but has lost a lot of money, as well (anyone remember the sock-puppet “spokesdog” for Pet.com?)  He is, nonetheless, passionate about the importance of innovation and the internet claiming the industry represents 2 million jobs in the US alone.  The accompanying video is an unedited record of his remarks, followed by his proposal to take internet piracy out of the hands of legislators and put it into the hands of the people it needs to protect, the technologists.

The day was marked by live protests around the nation as well as online protests.  Wikipedia, Reddit and WordPress among many others took their sites off line with only a request for visitors to write their representatives to pull support for the bills.  the protest seems to have had some effect as bill sponsors, like Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio removed his name from the bill.  The authors of both bills, Rep Lamar Smith of Texas and Senator Patrick Leahy have dug in their heels calling the protestors and the striking companies as “misinformed” about the bills.

Conway, in his remarks calling for a private effort to address the issue did not downplay the problem, but said the legislation proposed was ill-advised.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

The acquisition of Magma Design Automation by Synopsys was arguably the biggest story of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry in 2011.  It will also most likely end up being the biggest EDA story of 2012 as well.

Most observers were stunned at the news, and not because it was an unlikely fit.  It’s actually a great fit and gives Synopsys a virtual stranglehold on the digital IC design market. It was improbable because of the deep-set enmity between the two companies, especially between the two CEOs, Aart DeGeus and Rajeev Madhavan.  Both companies launched multiple lawsuits against each other over the past decade claiming patent infringement on a variety of technologies, all of which have been resolved prior to the acquisition but left scars throughout both companies.  As one source that spent time as an employee in both companies said, “It was personal for some people and just business for others but it was pervasive.”

The acrimony between DeGeus and Madhavan often manifested publicly.  DeGeus would often be absent from CEO panels where Madhavan was present, and Magma employees and supporters made sure the industry noted that Madhavan was often not invited when the leadership of Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys were represented.

Madhavan also perennially accused Synopsys of deliberately undercutting prices in large package deals, a charge DeGeus vehemently denied, perennially.  To Synopsys’ defense, however, it was an unofficial industry-wide practice, according to Jeff Jussel, senior director of global technology marketing at element14.  Jussel is a former ASIC designer and EDA executive (including marketing director at Magma) and is leading element14′s push into embedded and electronic design services.

There was so much competition between the big four it drove a never ending spiral of ever cheaper prices.  Better results, better productivity, but less and less money for the developers of that technology.  The big guys could deal with it better because they had the big “all you can eat” deals.  1 million for one year, 3 million for two years, 4 million for five years.  The deals looked bigger, but the terms were getting longer and the price per seat was coming down.  It started killing the innovation in start-ups because there was so much pressure on margins that there was nothing left to buy from the start-ups, and the start-ups were getting pushed to the side by the deals,” said Jussel.  “The practice squeezed innovative start-ups out of the market because they couldn’t compete and be profitable.”

Synopsys bought many failed start-ups for the cost of assets alone, eliminating competition and gaining valuable technology with little investment.  As this practice continued industry wide, investors saw little upside in funding new start-ups and, at present, there is virtually no interest in funding new companies that have no chance of an IPO nor of being acquired for a premium over investment.  This is where the acquisition of Magma may have the greatest potential for energizing the moribund industry.

First, it consolidates the industry nicely.  Synopsys holds digital, Cadence leads in analog and mixed signal, and Mentor dominates embedded design.  The lawsuits and undercutting that decimated the start-ups will be a thing of the past.  Customers will have to pay what the vendors ask or be forced to build their own solutions…or look to start-ups. Which brings us to the second reason.

At $507 million, it is the single largest acquisition in the industry’s history, eclipsing Cadence’s acquisition of Cooper & Chyan Technologies for $428 million in 1997.  When combined with the Ansys purchase of Apache Design for more $310 million and a handful of other smaller deal this year it helps release nearly a billion dollars of cash into the pockets of investors and founders.  All of these deals will be concluded before the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco this July.  Conservatively, the industry could see $100 million of that invested in new technology before the end of 2012.

And who will be leading that charge?  None other than Rajeev Madhavan.

Madhavan could be called the single most successful entrepreneur in the EDA industry.    He was a founder of LogicVision, a company that was sucked up by Mentor Graphics for $13 million in Mentor stock. He founded Ambit to attack the Synopsys logic synthesis hegemony, using guerilla marketing techniques to grab market share and, in the end, sold out to Cadence for a quarter billion dollars.  Madhavan reinvested much of his take into founding Magma, which went from start up to IPO in short order.  Combined with the Ambit valuation, Madhavan-founded companies account for over $700 million in corporate value.  No other single entrepreneur has those kind of results in their resume.

The sale agreement precludes Magma or Synopsys representatives’ speculation on who stays and who goes.  There are those who hope Madhavan stays put for some time and he must make that commitment for the sake of the deal.  But no one believes that DeGeus will want his nemesis hanging around the office coffee bar any longer than is necessary, and he will have followers as he goes out the door.

“I expect Rajeev to be gone within days of the deal being done,” Jussel stated.

That is not to say there will be a mass exodus.  According to Jussel, Magma has “some of the most intelligent and best educated people in the industry who love creating technology for IC Design.  They’re working for the customers, not the logo.”  Those are the people that Synopsys want to keep, and they will be very generous to them.

DeGeus has stated that the talent of Magma was what was important to Synopsys, not the technology, so does that mean Magma’s tools are going away?  Jussel laughed at that question. “We’ll see how that works out.  The existing installed base loves the Magma tools so they will continue to support those product lines or lose the business altogether.”

But there will be business minds with wads of cash in their pockets that won’t be as welcome.  The doors of start-ups will be wide open for these people.  That is very good news for an industry that has limped along for much of the past two decades and whose lack of consistent innovation has held back the semiconductor industry as well.

 Was the Synopsys Magma deal good for the industry?  Tell us why at element14.com

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Poland is due to become an official member of the Euro Zone in January 2012 and is obliged, under the terms of the Treaty of Accession 2003, to replace its current currency, the Zloty, with the Euro, however, the country may adopt the Euro no earlier than 2019.  That’s probably good news for Polish start ups that seem to be able to find plenty of government support and venture capital for a raft of innovative technologies.

Footwasher Media’s Lou Covey sat down with three Polish startup companies touring Silicon Valley recently, as they were on the hunt for partners and investors to help them expand into the US.  The three companies were Ekoenergetyka with electric vehicle charging technology, virtual environment maker i3d , and a chemical synthesis innovator called Apeiron.

This interview is the first in a series of reports and interviews on the state of European innovation and efforts of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

The aftermarket device provides the touch interface not available on PC-based instruments turning any iOS device into an ultraportable spectrum analyzer and dynamic power meter.  WiPry-Combo shows RF waveforms like an oscilloscope.  Actual power output can be triggered, captured, and recorded for protocol verification or for troubleshooting wireless devices with data logging in csv format.

In the spectrum analyzer mode, WiPry-Combo can identify interference or open channels in the 2.4GHz ISM band. Operating in the frequency range: 2.400 to 2.495 GHz, it measures signals from -40dBm to +20dBm with an amplitude resolution of 2.0dBm and a bandwidth resolution of 1MHz.  The band sweep time is 200ms.

The dynamic power meter mode graphically displays RF power levels in the 100MHz-2.7GHz waveform amplitude with respect to time.

The device is available from the company for $199.95. Software, including a demo package that does not require the actual WiPry device, is available free at the Apple™ AppStore, and is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Sponsored by element14

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Is learning from the past the key to the future, as philosopher Georges Santayana believed?  A former Lockheed-Martin CEO thinks so.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Norm Augustine, an IEEE Fellow who served as Lockheed-Martin’s CEO  from 1996 to 1997, said that the problem with US education is not a lack of focus on science and engineering, or even economics, but on history and communication skills.

Taking aim at STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education is a well-worn road for industry executives and gets fairly big headlines.

Earlier this past year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, took a minute from a fairly long speech

Schmidt talks down UK education

in the UK to slam the UK education system for not encouraging science and math students .  As a result, most every member of the media in the UK and many in the US ignored 99 percent of Schmidt’s text and focused on those four paragraphs out of 200  What was missed almost entirely in the coverage was the real focus of the speech: fostering innovation to boost the world economy. Even Augustine had piled on previously in a January 2011 Forbes Magazine piece blaming the lack of spending on science and technology education, as well as a lack of spending on energy technology, as reasons for the seeming dearth of innovation in the US. He claimed that the West spends more on potato chips than on energy research. According to recent data and the, however, Augustine’s later position might have more validity.

When discussions arise about the state of education the focus is always on the current cuts in education from an individual level – local, state and federal, but the discussions rarely look at the whole. And that “whole” paints a very different picture.

According to UNESCO, total education spending worldwide now exceeds $7 trillion, just for 2011 alone. Total public spending on education in the United States is 24 percent of that total for 4 percent of all students in the world from elementary to graduate school – close to $2 trillion this year. Even with the cuts in the past decade, this total is greater than the totals of any other country in the world.  In fact, the US spends more than the next five countries combined.  The Institute for Energy Research estimates that The US also spends 7 times more on alternative energy technology than on fossil fuel, according to the Energy Institute of America, and 70 percent of what is spent on alternative energy is in the form of direct grants, while 90 percent of the spending on oil is in the form of loans that are repaid. (By the way, the US spends $6 billion a year on potato chips and $70 billion on alternative energy research.)

So it’s not a lack of money spent on education or innovation.  Augustine points out that the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that scores on STEM subjects (sciences, technology, engineering and math) for US high school students scores, while low according world standards, are not the students’ lowest scores.  Surprisingly enough, their best subject is Economics.  Their worst score is in History.

“A failing grade in history suggests that students are not only failing to comprehend our nation’s story and that of our world, but also failing to develop skills that are crucial to employment across sectors,” he wrote. “Having traveled in 109 countries in this global economy, I have developed a considerable appreciation for the importance of knowing a country’s history and politics.”

What seems clear is that the West is not getting what it pays for in education.  That is not a reason to reduce funding, but it is a good reason to reexamine the educational priorities.

What did the Google Chief say about the quality of UK school curriculum?  Find out at: www.element14.com

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™