DFT Digest

June 25, 2008

Magma DFT - Dead Again

Filed under: Miscellaneous — John @ 4:04 pm

OK - lesson learned - maybe. I was tipped on this a week or so before DAC - it was pointed out to me that any content (besides the original press releases from last year) on Magma’s website relating to Magma’s Talus ATPG was MIA. Not wanting to jump the gun, I held back, thinking I could get a more complete story. I got a little bit more detail, but was asked not to publish it. I guess other folks weren’t asked the same, because here it is:

Magma ATPG is mothballed yet again. Here are the two stories that just came to me through Google Alerts:

Chris Edwards’ Shrinking Violence post “Magma bids adieu to ATPG” , which in turn links to the following story, “Magma Cans Test Tools” at the IET website (update: The IET story is also Chris’ - see his comment).

So, I am assuming Mr. Sanjay Bali (a Magma Product Director) did give someone permission to publish the news. Now it’s here.

The quote in the articles above from Mr. Bali was “We could not differentiate hugely with the ATPG solution” was a bit different from what he told me at DAC - “It’s cooking”, he said, indicating that the tool was just not ready for prime-time. This is more along the same line of what I heard from others last fall when the original announcement was made, that this tool was a long way from being a real product.

I would have thought differentiation would have been fairly easy, since none of the ATPG vendors are offering “power-aware” algorithms yet, that I know of. Synopsys’ latest work targets ’small-delay defects’, whereas Mentor’s latest efforts have been ultra-compression techniques. Cadence’s Encounter Test boasts “true-time” or faster than at-speed test with their ATPG.

Anyone out there know more of this story?

Do tell…

4 Responses to “Magma DFT - Dead Again”

Chris Edwards Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Just to clarify. The IET site story is mine - they don’t get bylined on the current version of the site, but that will change as of next week.

I rang Magma after I heard from a source that the DFT group was no more. The story was the result once I had confirmation from the company - Sanjay happened to be the exec I interviewed.
John B. Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
“It’s cooking” sounds pretty misleading! Too bad he didn’t give you a straight answer or a no comment.
DFT Digest Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
[...] as I mentioned in a previous post, in my short walk about the floor, besides noting the distinct lack of ATPG in the Magma booth, I did have a couple of enjoyable conversations with some test-related [...]
DFT Digest » Last Notes from DAC, then back to DFT (part 2) Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 6:17 am
[...] I wandered into the Magma booth and asked about their ATPG tool. But I’ve already told you that story. Then I stopped in and chatted with L.T. Wang of SynTest. Nice man. I like the books [...]