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Goanna Software has tools for static source code analysis, useful if you want to reduce security vulnerabilities, improve code quality or ensure compliance with industry coding standards.
It makes sense, EDA companies develop a lot of complex software and so they know the space. Also HW and SW development go hand in hand these days. This is totally in line with their Coverity acquisition. Mentor has a full quite of embedded development tools in their product line. This trend is increasing. " I liked the shaver so much I bought the company". Who remembers that one?
It makes sense, EDA companies develop a lot of complex software and so they know the space. Also HW and SW development go hand in hand these days. This is totally in line with their Coverity acquisition. Mentor has a full quite of embedded development tools in their product line. This trend is increasing. " I liked the shaver so much I bought the company". Who remembers that one?
I was familiar with Coverity, but have not seen Goanna before. There seems to be a large overlap in functionality with the Coverity tool, so it's hard to see what the value-add is, and given that the company is in Australia I can't see how they are going to integrate that with anything - Coverity is closer to San Francisco than Mountain View, and there was no apparent plan for integrating it into the EDA flow. I would therefore suspect it's probably just an attempt to stop somebody else acquiring technology that competes.
HW & SW development don't really go hand-in-hand, they're more like concurrent efforts with a common delivery date. As someone who has spent a long time looking at the hardware/software trade-off/co-development space, I would say there was a lot of promise in what Coverity/Goanna were doing up until they were acquired by Synopsys, but Synopysy's cash-cows of RTL synthesis and functional simulation aren't likely to morph into something with C++ as an input (no matter how good an idea that is).
simguru,
I believe that Synopsys is looking for new business areas of growth, and that these new areas don't have to be EDA-centric at all. High tech companies take risks all of the time by investing in new areas.
Intel started out as a DRAM company, then moved into Microprocessors and eventually exited their founding business of DRAM.
Even Microsoft started out with a single product, Microsoft BASIC, now discarded in the dustbins of high-tech history.
I believe that Synopsys is looking for new business areas of growth, and that these new areas don't have to be EDA-centric at all. High tech companies take risks all of the time by investing in new areas.
Intel started out as a DRAM company, then moved into Microprocessors and eventually exited their founding business of DRAM.
Even Microsoft started out with a single product, Microsoft BASIC, now discarded in the dustbins of high-tech history.
Absolutely. I was told the Synopsys board said they had to diversify, so they bought Coverity (because they liked it). Personally, I had a plan for folding Coverity's stuff into EDA, but that's never going to happen now. However, it's not much of a risk if you buy something that's already a profitable business.
The Intel DRAM/CPU thing was more the CEO/CTO thinking they would get fired because the core business was crashing, and they decided to do whatever their (potential) replacement would do. They also got lucky with X86 being the processor that IBM chose for the PC.
Having worked at Synopsys it seems unlikely there is any strategic master plan at work, maybe just defense against collapse of the core EDA business. The culture there is entirely risk-averse.
