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                The DINI Group Newsletter
                      June 29, 2004
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* 4-week old Himalayan Kitty pictures
* Godspeed to Bernie V.
* Nassda Corp. legal troubles mount
* Stuffed Animals from DAC 2004 – Fist fights over the purple cow
* DN6000k10SE -- 8-lane PCI Express!
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4-week old Himalayan Kitty pictures
 
Button (Amy’s Himalayan Cat) has had kitties again.  They are now 4-weeks old. 
All the eyes are open and they are starting to wander.  Note the confused, unfocused
eyes on these little guys.  It is too bad that kitties become cats.  Amy has posted
a picture slideshow here: Kitty Slide show.  The classic picture from the last
litter is here Rock Star the Kitty.  We have used this picture in our advertising
before we hired professionals to craft the ads.   This is ‘Rock Star’ as an
adult: Rock Star Adult.  Amy has assured me that this is the same cat even though
the eye color is different.
 
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Godspeed to Bernie V.
 
Bernie Vonderschmitt left us on June 9, 2004. I ran into Bernie many times in the
last 20 years and we had many long, detailed conversations about FPGAs.  He was
hard to miss in that large shaved dome of his -- I have no memories of him with hair.
In the 80’s, we never did agree on the proper amount of routing in FPGA’s.  His FPGAs
are literally in the stars above: Xilinx in the Stars. He was a pioneer. Godspeed
Bernie.
 
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Nassda Corp. legal troubles mount
 
I haven’t been able to figure out the legal and technical issues from the media
accounts of the Nassda case. What I understand scares me.  Clearly some of the
guys from Nassda had a bit of Synopsys code in their possession.  But I think
they wrote it to begin with when they were employed at Synopsys.
 
Nassda Legal Trouble
 
Money quote:
 
“The court's rulings clearly establish facts which support Synopsys' position that
Nassda misappropriated Synopsys' trade secrets and used Synopsys' intellectual
property in developing HSIM," said Rex S. Jackson, Synopsys VP and general counsel,
in a statement. "The Court has sent a clear message that it will not tolerate the
intentional destruction of evidence."
 
I understand the destruction of evidence thing.  But it isn’t clear to me how or
if the misappropriated code was used.  Now, I understand that you can’t take copyrighted
code verbatim and use it, but what does it mean to ‘misappropriate’ code?  How many of
you out there have code, schematics, or other, from old jobs?  If you do similar work
for another company, apparently this is illegal because it is easier the second time
around? Really? I hope that I misunderstand this.  I’m not sure it is a good idea to
make the learning curve illegal.
 
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Stuffed Animals from DAC 2004 – Fist fights over the purple cow
 
DAC 2004 was a good show, although attendance was down from the glory years.  I’m not
convinced that the combined show/demo arrangement worked.  We gave out 1500 stuffed
animals in the booth.  We had several different types: pigs, cows, clowns, bears, and
cats.  The cats tended to shed over everything and the fluff made you sneeze.  The
heads fell off of several cats.  By far, the most popular item was the purple cow.  More
than one fistfight broke out in front of our booth over the purple cows.   I had wanted
to get a bunch of stuffed insects, cut them up, and dump the lot of insect parts in front
of the booth:  'WE KILL ASIC BUGS’ would be our slogan.  But the PR people fell out of
their chairs – “Too violent!” they said.  I have more of these stuffed animals but no
purple cows.  If you missed DAC and want one, email me your requests to
mailto:mdini@dinigroup.com?subject=IWANNASTUFFEDANIMAL
 
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DN6000k10SE -- 8-lane PCI Express!
 
We are ready to ship the DN6000k10SE.  This product comes with a single VirtexII-Pro 2vp70,
2vpx70, or 2vp100.  We have replaced the PCI/PCI-X connector with an 8-lane PCI Express
connector, making this our first product with PCI Express.  Call or email for more
information or pricing.  The preliminary datasheet and block diagram are here:
DN6000k10SE -- PCI Express
 
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