3 ms·

The title is a unintentional clickbait...lol

by jrwan 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
helthanatos 10y ago
Funny... The title made me research the company some. I don't think I've heard of them.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  They are very well known in the electronics design industry. The other two major players in EDA are Cadence and Synopsys.
- scandox 10y ago
  I ran into them trying to get Toolchains for some weird pseudo-proprietary Linux distro that Intel was foisting on a project we did in conjunction with them
  - Matthias247 10y ago
    Yes, they provide embedded linux distributions. However I wouldn't wonder if these would be discontinued after the purchase, as they might not be what Siemens considers the core business of Mentor. Which is EDA tools I guess.
    - rgovind 10y ago
      I have a feeling Mentor had a finger in my pies. EDA, Embedded, automotive, compilers, PCB and what not. I feel Synopsys and Cadence are more focused.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    Mentor bought, and then killed, CodeSourcery. They had a great ARM/gcc toolchain but no more.
    - fazkan 10y ago
      Right, now they sell it with nucleus, on which I work......its safe to say that they had great toolchain, now there are better options available...
- nom 10y ago
  Only few people have contact with their product, but if you have to work with hardware description languages like VHDL or Verilog or want to design a chip, you will be very familiar with them. I think Mentor dominates the market together with Cadence and Synopsis. The tools used for chip design are so incredibly complex, it's impossible to build a competing product without decades of experience and development. What I find interesting is that tools like ModelSim don't look like modern software, the UI was never changed because it's not important. Examples: Mentor Modelsim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mpRF6bAY1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mpRF6bAY1g Cadence Virtuoso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPCu822wXPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPCu822wXPQ Synopsys Design Compiler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZmwWJ2FGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZmwWJ2FGI
  - manyxcxi 10y ago
    It's funny- I grew up in Portland with my dad working for Sequent (they built some pretty cool servers back in the day). We had stacks of various Cadence CDs sitting around in the home office growing up. Mentor Graphics has a huge presence here and pretty much everyone over the age of 35 in the Portland tech scene has worked for them or Intel at some point. One of my business partners worked there for at least a decade when I was in diapers. After IBM bought Sequent (a few years between events) my dad worked at Synopsys (also in the Portland area) for quite a while. To me, it's just always been, yeah Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys- no big deal. Then when someone freaks out because I have access to some of the tools or their eyes roll back and their look goes blank I remember that they are wildly specific companies that mean nothing to like 95% of the people I have ever met. EDIT: To bring it back full circle in a way no on else cares about: Nike wound up buying/taking control of the old Sequent campus after IBM bought them. Shortly after I had my first child I found myself working on a tech project as a partner with Nike in my dad's old building, on his old floor, in generally the same area and I had a kind of weird mental moment.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    It's important to note that most if not all of these tools are written for Linux first. You would usually have a local server running the tools which you'd then SSH into and use X11 forwarding to get the GUI. Interestingly, most of these tools can be fully automated and operated from the command line using Tcl (Mentor), or even a custom scripting language like Cadence's OCEAN. I personally found Cadence Virtuoso to have above average UX, but I do agree that the GUI looks slightly dated.

The title is a unintentional clickbait...lol

by jrwan 10y ago

The title is a unintentional clickbait...lol

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

helthanatos 10y ago

Funny... The title made me research the company some. I don't think I've heard of them.

Cyph0n 10y ago
They are very well known in the electronics design industry. The other two major players in EDA are Cadence and Synopsys.
scandox 10y ago
I ran into them trying to get Toolchains for some weird pseudo-proprietary Linux distro that Intel was foisting on a project we did in conjunction with them
- Matthias247 10y ago
  Yes, they provide embedded linux distributions. However I wouldn't wonder if these would be discontinued after the purchase, as they might not be what Siemens considers the core business of Mentor. Which is EDA tools I guess.
  - rgovind 10y ago
    I have a feeling Mentor had a finger in my pies. EDA, Embedded, automotive, compilers, PCB and what not. I feel Synopsys and Cadence are more focused.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  Mentor bought, and then killed, CodeSourcery. They had a great ARM/gcc toolchain but no more.
  - fazkan 10y ago
    Right, now they sell it with nucleus, on which I work......its safe to say that they had great toolchain, now there are better options available...
nom 10y ago
Only few people have contact with their product, but if you have to work with hardware description languages like VHDL or Verilog or want to design a chip, you will be very familiar with them. I think Mentor dominates the market together with Cadence and Synopsis. The tools used for chip design are so incredibly complex, it's impossible to build a competing product without decades of experience and development. What I find interesting is that tools like ModelSim don't look like modern software, the UI was never changed because it's not important. Examples: Mentor Modelsim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mpRF6bAY1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mpRF6bAY1g Cadence Virtuoso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPCu822wXPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPCu822wXPQ Synopsys Design Compiler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZmwWJ2FGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZmwWJ2FGI
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  It's funny- I grew up in Portland with my dad working for Sequent (they built some pretty cool servers back in the day). We had stacks of various Cadence CDs sitting around in the home office growing up. Mentor Graphics has a huge presence here and pretty much everyone over the age of 35 in the Portland tech scene has worked for them or Intel at some point. One of my business partners worked there for at least a decade when I was in diapers. After IBM bought Sequent (a few years between events) my dad worked at Synopsys (also in the Portland area) for quite a while. To me, it's just always been, yeah Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys- no big deal. Then when someone freaks out because I have access to some of the tools or their eyes roll back and their look goes blank I remember that they are wildly specific companies that mean nothing to like 95% of the people I have ever met. EDIT: To bring it back full circle in a way no on else cares about: Nike wound up buying/taking control of the old Sequent campus after IBM bought them. Shortly after I had my first child I found myself working on a tech project as a partner with Nike in my dad's old building, on his old floor, in generally the same area and I had a kind of weird mental moment.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  It's important to note that most if not all of these tools are written for Linux first. You would usually have a local server running the tools which you'd then SSH into and use X11 forwarding to get the GUI. Interestingly, most of these tools can be fully automated and operated from the command line using Tcl (Mentor), or even a custom scripting language like Cadence's OCEAN. I personally found Cadence Virtuoso to have above average UX, but I do agree that the GUI looks slightly dated.