IN THE NEWS

Business and technology news from the semiconductor and design tool industries.

Actel Buys TI's FPGA Business

On Feb. 12, Actel (Sunnyvale, CA) announced that they were purchasing the antifuse FPGA business of TX Instruments (TI, Dallas, TX). TI will no longer market FPGAs, but will continue to manufacture them for Actel .

At closing, Actel will deliver to TI $10 million in cash and one million shares of a new series of Actel preferred stock with a liquidation value of $25 million.

"I think its a good deal for both sides," says Rhondalee Rohleder, of Pace Technologies (Scottsdale, AZ), "because TI had to address its position. With the decline of bipolar devices, some of their business was declining with it. They were providing FPGAs, too, but although there was some growth there, they didn't have a full product line."

In Rohleder's view, selling the FPGA business was a good choice for TI. It would have required a lot of time, effort and money on TI's part to catch up, and though they had been working on bringing their own new product to market to compete with Actel's ACT3, according to Rohleder, "there are conflicting indicators as to its status at the time of the buyout."

As far as Actel is concerned, they're picking up easy market shares by adding TI's business to their own. Actel did some $76 million in business during 1994, and TI's was around $20 million. Given the approximately 30 percent annual growth rate in the FPGA market, Rohleder says that it's not unreasonable to expect Actel to take in over $100 million in FPGA business in 1995. This would put them in what Rohleder considers the top tier of manufacturers.

Closing is conditioned upon the expiration or termination of all applicable waiting periods under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.

Hyundai Electronics America acquires NCR Micro-electronics products business Hyundai Electronics America (HEA, San Jose, CA) has completed its purchase of the NCR Microelectronic Products Division from AT&T Global Information Solutions Co. (Dayton, OH). The newly acquired unit will operate under the name Symbios Logic Inc. (Ft. Collins, CO)

The new chief executive officer is H. Gene Patterson, former vice president of AT&T Global Information Solutions in charge of the NCR microelectronics unit.

HEA is a subsidiary of Hyundai Electronics Industries (Inchon, South Korea), a sister company to the automaker Hyundai Motor Co. The exact terms were not disclosed, but the purchase price was in excess of $300 million, representing the largest direct involvement of a Korean company in the United States.

NewsBytes

QuickLogic (Santa Clara, CA) has dropped the price on their pASIC-1 antifuse FPGA WildCat series 60 percent.

The Leapfrog VHDL simulator from Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, CA), using an ASIC vendor qualified VITAL-based library, has received sign-off status from TX Instruments (Austin, TX).

Cypress Semiconductor (San Jose, CA) has reduced prices on its UltraLogic Flash370 CPLDs and pASIC380 FPGAs by up to 40 percent.

Samsung Semiconductor (San Jose, CA) has become the fifteenth IC licensee and fifth DRAM partner of Rambus (Mountain View, CA) by licensing technology from them to develop Rambus DRAMs.

3Com (Santa Clara, CA) has selected the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, CA) Am29030 microprocessor as a featured component of its new LANPlex 2000 series of switching hubs.

AMD has become the first vendor to have a single CPLD (the MACH210) ship over one million units in a single quarter.

Cascade Design Automation (Bellevue, WA) has signed a $5.5 million contract with Motorola (Mesa, AZ) to supply several Motorola divisions with semiconductor software.

Sandia National Labs (Albuquerque, NM), a U.S. Dept. of Energy multiprogram laboratory conducting research and development in national defense, energy, and environmental technologies, has selected the Honeywell Solid State Electronics Center (Plymouth, MN) to be its sole source military supplier for radiation-hardened ASICs.

Chronologic Simulation (Los Altos, CA) has completed a licensing agreement with Simulation Technologies (SimTech, St. Paul, MN) to bundle SimTech's VirSim debugging environment with Chronologic Simulation Verilog simulator products.

Cadence and LG Semicon (formerly GoldStar Electron, Seoul, South Korea) announced two deals totaling $4 million in design tools and services. LG Semicon intends this to be a step in the move from its role as a high-volume, second-source IC supplier to that of a major player in IC design and production.

Group Technologies (Tampa, FL) has signed a licensing agreement with Motorola allowing the former to manufacture the latter's proprietary ball grid array technology for use in their own assembly operations.

Seva Technologies (Fremont, CA) is beginning a series of regularly scheduled one-, two-, and three-day "hands on" EDA training courses at their offices. They will be teaching both VHDL and Verilog. Call April Mitchell at (510) 249-9085 for more information.

Movers and Shakers

Harris Electronic Design Automation (Fishers, NY) has brought several new people into their fold. John LoRusso has joined as director of western area sales; his responsibilities include the western U.S. and Canada. Jon Axel has also been hired as lead applications engineer. Stephen LoCicero is the new senior applications engineer in the Boston office, while Shala Napier is the new senior applications engineer in the San Jose office. Lisa Schaertl has been hired as senior marketing communications manager. Steven Willis was promoted to product marketing manager for Harris EDA's EDAvalidator and EDAassimilator products.

Chi-ping Hsu is the new vice president of product management for ArcSys (Sunnyvale, CA). Noriko Ando has been named to manage Japanese operations at the new Tokyo office of ArcSys.

Gene Robinson has resigned his position as senior vice president of sales and marketing at Viewlogic Systems (Marlboro, MA). Dave DeMaria has been hired as group vice president of Viewlogic's new Systems/Powerview Group. Vance Nahman has been promoted to group vice president for high-level design (HLD).

TSMC-USA (San Jose, CA) has appointed Ronald C. Norris to the position of senior director of business development.

Open Verilog International (OVI, Los Gatos, CA) has appointed Vassilios C. Gerousis as chairman of its Technical Coordinating Committee for the Verilog hardware description language.

MoneyBits

Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, CA) reported revenue of $121.7 million for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31, 1994. This was a 15 percent increase over the same period the previous year. The net income for the period was $20.9 million.

Cypress Semiconductor (San Jose, CA) had record earnings and revenue for the fourth quarter and fiscal 1994. There was a 159 percent annual growth in income, and a 33 percent increase in sales. Revenues grew to $406.4 million, and net income was $50.5 million.

SpeedSim (Westford, MA) announced a first-round of financing of $2 million from Fidelity Venture Associates, a Boston-based venture capital firm. SpeedSim will use the funds to expand R&D efforts.

Integrated Silicon Systems (ISS, Research Triangle Park, N.C.) reported revenues of $4 million for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, and $12 million for the year. Net income was $1 million for the quarter and $3 million for the year.

High Level Design Systems (HLD, Santa Clara, CA) announced that the Vancouver Stock Exchange has agreed to trade the company's shares in U.S. currency and to cease trading of its shares in Canadian currency.

Chrysalis Symbolic Design (Billerica, MA) has raised an additional $5 million in venture funding from a group of investors that includes the company's previous backers (Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, and Morgenthaler Ventures) and a new company, Highland Capital Partners.

integrated system design  April 1995