As any publisher can tell you, summer is the season to sell mystery books. People are on vacation and they want something stimulating to keep them entertained while they half-watch the kids run wild at the beach. So in that vein, I'll now share with you an EDA summer mystery book that still confounds me.
Two years ago, at DAC'97, behavioral tools seemed to be the wave of the future. A number of companies presented some sort of behavioral thingy, with the leader being the Synopsys Behavioral Compiler (BC). But, what was even more interesting at that DAC was an architectural exploration tool from Mentor called Monet that rode on top of BC. Monet ran quickly and didn't have 1/100th of the painful complexity that awkward Behavioral Compiler had. If I had written a DAC Trip Report that year, I would have given Monet first prize.
Now, fast-forward two years to the recent DAC'99. Behavioral tools never really made it mainstream, but they now have their group of cult followers. Two weeks before DAC'99, Kluwer Academic sent out a flyer for its chip-design books. The new book Understanding Behavioral Synthesis, by John Elliott of Mentor, was on the cover of the flyer ( ISBN 0-7923-8542-X). It even came with a CD-ROM. Looked interesting. So, when I found the Kluwer booth at DAC, I asked for the book. The Kluwer guy said, "Mentor bought the entire first-edition run for its customers." I said, "That's OK. I just want to look at it for a minute." He replied: "Legally, all I can say is that Mentor bought the entire first edition run for its customers."
Oh.
So, 750 copies at $115 each, that makes $86,250 Mentor spent to hide something. Hmmm...
And it gets more interesting. A few days later, I clicked on the Kluwer Web site (http://www.wkap.n). No Understanding Behavioral Synthesis or any John Elliott books at all. I phoned Mentor directly. No John Elliott listed. I talked to the HR department. "He no longer works at Mentor." Clicked on www.mentorg.com to see if "Monet" was still a product. Yup, Monet's there with one of those canned customer endorsements from some guy at Alcatel. I talked to Mentor's public relations department and got a four-person runaround until one contract PR guy finally said, "I know a guy who knows the whole story. I'll get an e-mail from him to you by tomorrow morning, John."
The next morning I received a blind (no Mentor address) single sentence forwarded e-mail that read: "Mentor Graphics' intention is to distribute its behavioral synthesis book in conjunction with its behavioral synthesis technology." That was it! Nothing more. Huh? I'm confused. Very confused.
John Cooley runs the e-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a contract ASIC Designer and loves hearing from engineers at "jcooley@world.std.com" or (508) 429-4357.
