David,
I am in general agreement with all of your points; I think my public record of
actions, magazine columns, and speeches makes this quite clear. However, just
to play devil's advocate, I should also point out that MPEG is not in the
public domain, and I have been told that companies such as TI, Lucent, et al.
in fact pay royalties for it's use (the algorithms were supposedly developed in
Germany, I don't have details). Another example is in cellular phones, where
CDMA is a U.S. "standard", however it belongs to Qualcomm (and this is causing
trouble for the 3G initiative right now). My point is just that there are many
kinds of "standards", and depending on market forces, level of development
effort, as well as pure circumstance, there can be a role in the market for all
kinds of efforts. This is specifically NOT an endorsement of the Synopsys SDC
for DCWG, and I believe (at this time) that the future design capability will
require more than SDC currently has to offer. Nonetheless, I realize that
business interests can be served in a multitude of ways, with truly open
standards as the preferred 1st choice.
Regards,
Steve Schulz
At 04:56 PM 12/16/98, dwp@aloft.micro.lucent.com wrote:
>
>To all:
>
>I have some general questions concerning using a proprietary
>design constraint language and would like to understand a few things.
>I have not been an active participant, but I have been observing.
>
>1. An open standard provides opportunity and competition in
> developing the best possible documentation. Where is the
> incentive for making the best possible documentation.
> For example:
> I have several VHDL books, some of them good and some of them
> not so good, regardless, I have a significant amount of choice
> in books, media format etc.
>
>2. A proprietary language may not lend itself to innovation.
> If it becomes a standard, why would suppliers have to
> respond to customer demand since customers will be locked
> in?
>
>3. Any synthesis, layout tool etc. should be able to
> associate design information/constraints with as many
> constructs in the source code as possible.
> e.g. a tool should be able to uniquely assign constraints
> to processes, statements, blocks etc. as defined by
> configurations, generate statements and hierarchy.
> However, if the constraint language does not support
> some constructs, would the customers be able to get the constraint
> language changed if they are already buying a tool that
> covers the shortfall?
>
>4. There are many different open standards that define
> electronic systems (ethernet, MPGEG, JPEG, etc.), so
> why does anyone think that a good and evolving standard
> has to be proprietary?
>
>
>5. Lastly, should consumers take this committee seriously
> or are the members of this committee taking advantage
> of complacent customers, and would like to thwart a
> free-market standard?
>
>
>David W. Potter
Regards,
Steve
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| Steven E. Schulz, P.E. | Internet: ses@ti.com |
| Senior Member, Technical Staff | Voice: (972) 480-1662 |
| Advanced ASIC Architecture | FAX: (972) 480-2356 |
| Semiconductor Group | P.O. Box 660199, M/S 8645 |
| Texas Instruments | Dallas, Tx. 75266-0199 |
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