I laughed when I heard the story. It seems Patrick Wei, a newly hired Apache field engineer, had used false credentials to enter the Sequence suite at the Design Automation Conference for a demo. The Sequence guys discovered the ruse when they went spying on Apache's DAC booth and found Patrick working there. Sequence was furious, but it was all in the good fun of the DAC tradition. Or so it seemed until Patrick got fired.

Spend a little time around EDA folk and one of the first things you'll learn is that the EDA world is very small and close-knit. Even down at the R&D level, everybody pretty much knows what everyone else is working on. Nassda is mostly ex-Synopsys Epic guys. Silicon Perspectives was mostly ex-Cadence employees. Synplicity and Verplex swim with ex-Mentor guys. Magma, AmmoCore, InTime, Atrenta, Novas, Simplex, CoWare are all a mix of ex-Cadence and ex-Synopsys employees. Sequence is a mix of ex-Avanti, ex-Sente, ex-Mentor and ex-Cadence engineers.

'A homecoming'

"There's a limited number of EDA R&D guys, and they move around like crazy," said Michael Santarini of EE Times. "DAC is like a homecoming for them. They've all worked together at one time or another."

Those of us who have been around EDA for a while know that DAC really is just a place is where EDA vendors make marketing pitches to see what sticks with users. Vic Kulkarni, the CEO of Sequence (and an ex-Avanti marketing VP), knows the difference between a rival stealing his source code vs. his marketing message. So I got quite angry when I found out that Patrick had been fired from Apache and that Vic then involved him in a lawsuit anyway.

All this because Patrick snagged his Sequence sales pitch? That ain't right, and it makes Sequence look paranoid and desperate. What was Vic thinking when he initiated this frivolous lawsuit?

John Cooley runs the E-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a contract ASIC designer and loves hearing from engineers at jcooley@TheWorld.com or (508) 429-4357.

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