Synplicity/Leonardo License Agreement Information
S. Ramirez
I have been advised that the sharing of benchmark data concerning at
least one of these two products is a violation of the license agreement of
that product, and this may be true of the other product.
Earlier, I asked for benchmarking information, but please do not send
me any benchmarking data that you may have obtained
in any manner from these products.
Thank you very much.
Simon Ramirez, Consultant
Synchronous Design, Inc.
Oviedo, FL USA
"S. Ramirez" <sram...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:mqBv7.298567$8c3.54...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com...
> Has anyone done a trade study recently on Synplify vs. Leonardo? If
> yes and you would like to share the results, please do so here or email me
> privately. A client company has asked me to do a trade study of the
several
> products on the market, and I would like to get some preliminary
information
> on these two products. I am particularly interested in actual synthesis
> results of real application test cases. A simple description of the test
> cases along with the results is sufficient. Also, I am interested in any
> outstanding features and/or quirks of the two products.
> Thank you very much.
> Simon Ramirez, Consultant
> Synchronous Design, Inc.
> Oviedo, FL USA
Austin Franklin
me...
> I have been advised that the sharing of benchmark data concerning at
> least one of these two products is a violation of the license agreement of
> that product, and this may be true of the other product.
I am curious who "advised" you?
I'm also curious as to the actual enforceable legality of such an inclusion
into the license agreement. An agreement can contain anything it wants
(they can even ask you to agree to not pick your nose while using their
tools), but whether it's legally enforceable is another matter entirely.
This is my take on it...and is only my opinion. If this purported violation
even has any legal grounds... It's certainly not a criminal activity...and
not being such, it has to fall into civil litigation. In civil cases, you
have to prove damages...and as far as I know, stating something that is
factually true, unless done maliciously, does not give grounds for damages.
Can you imagine a company suing someone because they published a benchmark
that showed that their product actually sucked?
Anyone know anything about this...aside from that it's childish to even put
such a clause in a license agreement in the first place...
Imagine buying a car (or a pencil for that matter) that came with a "license
agreement" that you could not "share" the comparison of your car (or pencil)
with any other car...think about how, well, just plain silly (and pathetic)
that is.
Tom Seim
contracts to make their collective lives miserable.
"Austin Franklin" <aus...@dar87kroom.com> wrote in message news:<ts7f3mc...@corp.supernews.com>...
Rick Filipkiewicz
Tom Seim wrote:
> Maybe we can make the lawyers do logic design & we can dream up
> contracts to make their collective lives miserable.
>
>
You would end up with FFs that have to be paid $100's for each toggle.
Jim Granville
Close, but incorrect :-)
You would end up with FFs that have to be paid $100's for each side
of the toggle/not toggle argument, but an actual toggle would
not necessairly result.
-jg
Rick Filipkiewicz
Jim Granville wrote:
Closer :-))
Definition: Metastable - That state in which lawyers tend to remain for as
long as the money holds out.
Zoltan Kocsi
> Dear Newsgroup Members,
> I have been advised that the sharing of benchmark data concerning at
> least one of these two products is a violation of the license agreement of
> that product, and this may be true of the other product.
Just out of curiosity, which one ?
Zoltan
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ** To reach me write to zoltan in the domain of bendor com au ** |
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Zoltan Kocsi | I don't believe in miracles |
| Bendor Research Pty. Ltd. | but I rely on them. |
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------+
Jeff Cunningham
> me...
Indeed.
If I recall correctly, I saw something like this when installing the xilinx
free tools - was it the XST synthesis tool; or maybe it was the free version
of ModelSim? Though what I remember is that the prohibition was on
"publishing" any benchmark results, as in posting to usenet; I can't see how
emailing results to one person would even be in violation of that assinine
license clause.
Jeff
Andy Peters
Uh oh! The person who posted Synplify's results for that 56-bit counter
problem is in line for an ass-whooping!
-a
Brian Davis
>
> Uh oh! The person who posted Synplify's results for that 56-bit counter
> problem is in line for an ass-whooping!
>
> -a
Andy,
They haven't remotely detonated my key ( or my ass ) yet :)
According to the Synplify license ( excerpt copyright Synplicity ):
"Licensee acknowledges that the scope of the licenses granted
hereunder do not permit Licensee (and Licensee shall not allow
any third party) to:"
<snip>
"(iv) disclose the results of any benchmarking of the SOFTWARE,
or use such results for its own competing software development
activities, without the prior written permission of Synplicity;"
Personally, I wouldn't consider answering a question on how to make
a counter synthesize better to be a "benchmark"...
But then again, nor would I make the software guys writing the
synthesis tool insert a copyright message into any cuts and pastes
done from the online help code examples...
Brian
p.s. : upon further reflection, perhaps I should have checked to see if
posting an excerpt of the license terms is a violation of the license...
Brian Davis
"2. Restrictions."
<snip>
"You may not publish any data or information that compares
the performance of the Software with software created or
distributed by others."
( Had I posted both license excerpts in the same message, would
that constitute 'license benchmarking' ? )
----------------------------------------------------------------
> Uh oh! The person who posted Synplify's results for that 56-bit
> counter problem is in line for an ass-whooping!
Upon even more reflection, should it come to that, I could
probably plead insanity vis-a-vis my original counter post:
JUDGE: How do you explain this egregious posting of useful
information?
DEFENDANT: But your Honor, after reading 3000 responses about
asynchronous resets and GSR, none of which clarified the cause
of the coherently cleared counter curiously containing copious
CLBs, I just HAD to post a message explaining the paradoxical
result that lowering the synthesis target frequency would result
in a counter that is both smaller and faster after P&R.
JUDGE: For your offense, and in the light of your excessive
alliteration of words beginning with the letter "C", I hereby
sentence you to use FPGA Express for all future synthesis work.
Bailiff, take him away.
Brian
Ken McElvain
Brian Davis wrote:
> Andy Peters <an...@exponentmedia.deletethis.com> wrote:
>
>>Uh oh! The person who posted Synplify's results for that 56-bit counter
>>problem is in line for an ass-whooping!
>>
>>-a
>>
>
> Andy,
>
> They haven't remotely detonated my key ( or my ass ) yet :)
>
> According to the Synplify license ( excerpt copyright Synplicity ):
>
> "Licensee acknowledges that the scope of the licenses granted
> hereunder do not permit Licensee (and Licensee shall not allow
> any third party) to:"
> <snip>
> "(iv) disclose the results of any benchmarking of the SOFTWARE,
> or use such results for its own competing software development
> activities, without the prior written permission of Synplicity;"
>
> Personally, I wouldn't consider answering a question on how to make
> a counter synthesize better to be a "benchmark"...
We don't consider it to be a "benchmark" either.
>
> But then again, nor would I make the software guys writing the
> synthesis tool insert a copyright message into any cuts and pastes
> done from the online help code examples...
I think someone just set the "Copyright" field during the help file
build not knowing what it did. I'll forward this to our documentation
folks.
Ken McElvain
Brian Davis wrote:
> From the Webpack XST license ( excerpt copyright Xilinx ):
>
> "2. Restrictions."
> <snip>
> "You may not publish any data or information that compares
> the performance of the Software with software created or
> distributed by others."
>
>
> ( Had I posted both license excerpts in the same message, would
> that constitute 'license benchmarking' ? )
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>>Uh oh! The person who posted Synplify's results for that 56-bit
>>counter problem is in line for an ass-whooping!
>>
>
> Upon even more reflection, should it come to that, I could
> probably plead insanity vis-a-vis my original counter post:
>
> JUDGE: How do you explain this egregious posting of useful
> information?
>
> DEFENDANT: But your Honor, after reading 3000 responses about
> asynchronous resets and GSR, none of which clarified the cause
> of the coherently cleared counter curiously containing copious
> CLBs, I just HAD to post a message explaining the paradoxical
> result that lowering the synthesis target frequency would result
> in a counter that is both smaller and faster after P&R.
If the load control and data for a sync load are less critical (before
P&R) than other input signals to the counter, then we build them into
the carry chain luts. Otherwise, they get their own column following
the carry chain. Synplify should have used the sync reset instead
of building a sync load.
Andy Peters
> JUDGE: For your offense, and in the light of your excessive
> alliteration of words beginning with the letter "C", I hereby
> sentence you to use FPGA Express for all future synthesis work.
> Bailiff, take him away.
Thus endeth your career as an FPGA designer!
-a