Design and Verification Engineers Can Now Test-Drive More Software in Online Labs

San Francisco, California – October 13, 2009 – Xuropa^SM Incorporated today announced that Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CDNS) has added Incisive® Formal Verifier and Incisive Enterprise Specman-Elite ® Testbench to its Xuropa Online Labs.

 

Based upon the Cadence® SoC Functional Verification Kit, approved design and verification engineers can quickly and easily try out these two additional Cadence verification products and learn new techniques online. The SoC Functional Verification Kit automates and eases the adoption of new verification technologies that increase productivity and project predictability, from verification planning to closure.

 

Users can now also run testbench simulation and formal analysis on example circuits at their convenience from their desktops. Using only a standard web browser, approved visitors to Xuropa Labs™ can now access the following two new labs:

 

• Block, Chip, and System Testbench Verification with Incisive Enterprise Specman-Elite Testbench
• Connectivity Verification, Productivity Flows, and Designer Level Formal Analysis with Incisive Formal Verifier

 

The service is free to Xuropa members and dramatically simplifies the process of evaluating EDA software products. Users can begin to test-drive applications in minutes vs. the days or weeks it used to take to get agreements signed, software downloaded, and license keys installed.

 

Simplified Initial Product Evaluation

 

“We have seen the value that Xuropa Online Labs bring to enable customers to test-drive Incisive Verification IP online, and we are excited to meet more customer needs by expanding our offering,” said Sarah Lynne Lundell, Enterprise Verification Senior Product Marketing Manager at Cadence. “Today’s schedules are so tight, it is important to simplify the initial evaluation process. Removing the need for a Software Product License Agreement to evaluate new software lets design and verification engineers focus on the potential productivity, predictability and quality gains for their projects.”

 

Face-to-face meetings are always going to be important, but as design teams are now global, software vendors need to simultaneously engage multiple locations and accelerate the engagement process.

 

“The Xuropa Platform uses the power of Cloud Computing and web 2.0 technologies to accelerate the software sales process and increase revenues for software vendors,” Xuropa CEO and founder James Colgan explained. “The Xuropa team is very happy to see Cadence realize the returns of the platform and make more of their industry leading technology available on the platform.”

 

Availability

Xuropa Online Labs featuring Cadence Incisive Formal Verifier and Specman Elite Testbench are available today and accessible at no cost to authorized Xuropa members. Go to www.xuropa.com and sign-in for access. For information about how to create your own Online Lab, or any of the other Xuropa Platform products, please contact Xuropa at the address below.

 

 

About Xuropa Incorporated

The Xuropa Platform and a Xuropa Lab™ bridge the gap between traditional Enterprise Software and Software-as-a-Service business and distribution models. Xuropa^SM Incorporated was founded by veterans from the internet, IT, and electronics industries with the goal of transitioning Enterprise Software to a SaaS model to increase revenues and lower costs.  http://www.xuropa.com/

 

Contact:

sales@xuropa.com

+1 (415) 727-5741

 

Cadence, Specman-Elite and Incisive are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

 

 

Posted under News, Xuropa

Richard Goering, the famed Industry Insights editor for Cadence, posted an interesting analysis of how Cadence is using the Xuropa Platform.  The openening paragraph summed it up quite nicely:

“Evaluating EDA software or silicon IP is an arduous process that often requires negotiated license agreements, software downloads, installation, and the physical presence of a jet-lagged AE who just flew across the country. What if you could run an evaluation instantly on line, and skip all that? That’s what Cadence is working with independent web site Xuropa to provide – and the end result could impact the way in which EDA software and silicon IP is evaluated and sold.”

As you can tell from the timeline, Cadence was very thorough in their approach to the Xuropa Platform and have already seen great dividends since they launched back in May.  Regarding the end-user response, Susan Peterson (VIP Portfolio Marketing Director, Cadence) noted in an interview with Richard:

“The user response so far has been really, really good,” she said. She noted that users are spread throughout the world, with many from Asia, where it’s difficult to physically bring in AEs to run demos. “Engineers don’t really want to leave their desks, and they like being able to do things when they want to do things,” she said. “Engineers like to get their hands on stuff – to not just read a datasheet, but get on line and try something out.”

For the whole article click here.

To check out one of Cadence’s Online Labs click here.

Posted under News, industry

First of all, an apology for bombarding my Twitter followers with news tweets.  I made the mistake of experimenting with my personal account and learned the downside of “open-air” product development.  The spigot has been turned off. 

This past week we’ve been experimenting with Twitter feeds and automation with the aim of solving a growing industry problem.  Ironically, the aim of our Twitter development work is to increase the SNR of industry news rather than decrease it.  We also aim to improve a news stream’s utility for the rest of the industry while overcoming a common user behavior.

There is a very large number of sources of news and valuable opinion to track in our industry.  The Xuropa platform gathers about 80 streams from across the industry which often yields over 400 items per day.  And the number of sources is actually growing - more blogs covering narrower and deeper segments of knowledge; and new neighboring industries such as Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are starting to become of interest.  (By the way, if there’s a source that you think is important to the community you can add it yourself.)

And here’s the reason for the development:  While having all of your news in one place helps (a feed reader, or a customizable page like iNews on Xuropa, for example) , there is still an awful lot of news out there to scan through and know what is and is not of value.  Everyone is busy, and time is getting more scarce.

The most effective way to get the insight of what should be read is to leverage the community (”crowd sourcing“).  What the community reads is likely to be what is most valuable to read and should bubble up to the top for others to read. 

This is the basic principle behind Digg, but Digg doesn’t help electronic design.  We simply do not have a large enough community to compete with the volume of Consumer Electronics readers, for example.  “Using OCP and extensions to support system-level cache coherence” is never going to get to the top of Digg.  But it is currently #6 in today’s Top News in Xuropa.  ie. If you go to Xuropa iNews you’ll get a good idea of what news is being read and what you should maybe read yourself.  (There are still some discrepancies that we’re working on as we’re increasing the sophistication of the system, but you’ll get the idea.)

So, why Twitter?  This is all part of the “dissaggreated web”.  Specifically, you shouldn’t have to go to a particular website to get a utility it offers.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s the way things are going. 

You shouldn’t have to come to Xuropa to read the article, but we need to make a note that a particular article has been read and that contributes to the ranking of that article.  The bigger the dataset we have to work on, the better the results we can present to the community.

While this is just the start of a small piece of what we’re doing on Xuropa, I hope this explains a little bit about where we see this going.

So, we’ve learned a lot in this past week.  (Unfortunately for some I did not learn fast enough.)  As always, any input, suggestions, or requests you may have, drop us a line, tweet, email, or comment.  Just no letters please - save the tree.

And finally, thank you to all those that provided feedback on this project.

- James

Posted under Community, Features, Xuropa, industry