IN THE NEWS

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

OrCAD Acquires Massteck

OrCAD (Beaverton, OR), a supplier of desktop electronic design automation (EDA) software, announced at the PCB Design Conference that they will be acquiring Massteck (Boxborough, MA) a printed circuit board (PCB) technology firm.

OrCAD plans to support Massteck's entire product line, their customers, and OEM agreements. At the same time, they plan to integrate Massteck's MaxEDA PCB layout software into their own OrCAD Design Desktop for Windows product line.

Massteck employees will transition to the Oregon headquarters of OrCAD. In the meantime, Massteck president Al Ackerman will remain in Massachusetts as general manager of the Massteck operations.

"Competition will increase in this market," says Gary Smith, senior industry analyst with Dataquest (San Jose, CA), "and there will be a lot of casualties in the next few years. Only those companies who understand the true implications of producing shrink-wrapped products will succeed. OrCAD and Massteck understand this, and OrCAD's acquisition of Massteck positions them very well for the future."

NewsBytes

Summit Design (Beaverton, OR) has entered into a cooperative agreement with Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, CA) to develop a Verilog version of its Visual HDL electronic system design automation tool.

LogicVision was awarded a $2.3 million contract under the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA)/Tri-Services Rapid Prototyping of Application Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) program. They are to develop CAD tools to make built-in self test (BIST) an integrated feature for electronic systems, particularly digital signal processors.

Cadence and Unisys (Blue Bell, PA) have announced that Cadence will assume substantial portions of Unisys' internal silicon design operation. The outsourcing contract is valued at approximately $75 million over five years. As a result of the agreement, more than 150 Unisys designers will become Cadence employees.

SGS-Thomson has opened a new design center in Noida, India.

The Designers Council Program Committee of the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC) is announcing a call for papers for the IPC Designers Council Design Conference and Exhibition, to be held November 1-3 in Providence, RI. Abstract deadline is April 30. Fax 708-677-9570 for more information.

European Silicon Structures (ES2, Rousset, France), working on the ESPRIT ALCD project, has selected the Eldo analog simulation system and HDL-A behavioral language from Anacad for characterization and implementation of a new advanced analog cell library.

The IEEE Long Island Section is issuing a call for papers for the 1995 Wireless Communication System Symposium to be held November 28 and 29 in Huntington Long Island, NY Call Nader Bolourchi, general chair, at 516-686-7863 for more information.

ICT (San Jose, CA) has signed an agreement with Source Electronics (Hollis, NH) for distribution of its programmable electrically erasable logic (PEEL) products.

3M Electronic Products Division (Austin, TX) and Tessera (San Jose, CA) have formed an alliance to manufacture and market Tessera Compliant Mounting Tape (TCMT) for micro ball grid array packages.

ICSPAT '95 (the International Conference on Signal Processing Applications and Technology), featuring DSP World Expo and Data Acquisition Expo will be held in Boston, MA on October 24-26. They are issuing a call for 400-word abstracts for papers. The deadline for abstracts is April 28. Fax abstracts to (617) 899-4449, or e-mail them to icspat@dspnet.com.

Sony Electronics (Park Ridge, NJ) has announced the formation of Sony Semiconductor Company of America (San Jose, CA), a new integrated organization that designs, manufactures, markets, and sells semiconductors for the U.S. market.

Dataquest (San Jose, CA) research reported by the Electronic Design Automation Companies (EDAC) shows an increase in the level of growth in the EDA software industry. The 10.77 percent increase in 1994 more than doubles EDA growth experienced in recent years.

Xilinx (San Jose, CA) is reducing prices on its XC3100A and XC4000 FPGAs, and XC7000 line of EPLDs. Prices have been cut by as much as 40 percent on Xilinx's CPLDs.

Schlumberger Automatic Test Equipment Division (San Jose, CA) has won a multi-million dollar contract to deliver ITS 9000 semiconductor test systems to Hyundai Electronics (Inchon, Korea).

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is holding the second annual Rapid Prototyping of Application-Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) Conference July 24 through July 27 in Arlington, VA. For more information, contact Mark Feuchter at (703) 351-8662.

High Level Design Systems (Santa Clara, CA) has become a charter member of in-Sync, a focused EDA vendor partnership program unveiled by Synopsys .com/isdweb/&lf=isd-sendtolog"> Synopsys (Mountain View, CA).

Silicon Systems (Tustin, CA) has joined the Fast Ethernet Alliance, a multi-vendor group focused on developing specifications for 100Mbps ethernet technology, as a full member.

American Microsystems (Pocatello, ID) and WSI (Fremont, CA) have formed an alliance to develop mask-programmable versions of WSI's PSD microcontroller peripherals.

Three organizations-- the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC), the Electronics Industries association, and the Joint Electronic Design Engineering Council --are attempting to develop an industry joint standard on the implementation of ball grid array technology and other high pin-count technologies. For more information, call the IPC technical department at (708) 677-9570.

Epic Design Technology (Santa Clara, CA) has announced that it is switching to CD-ROM technology for product distribution.

PRI Automation (Billerica, MA) has received a multi-year, $10 million order from Integrated Device Technology (IDT, Santa Clara, CA) for an automation system to be installed in IDT's new semiconductor fabrication facility under construction in Hillsboro, OR

Movers and Shakers

Jack Harding has been appointed president and chief executive officer of Cooper and Chyan Technology (Cupertino, CA)

Quickturn Design Systems (Mountain View, CA) has promoted Bill Cibulsky to vice president of international operations.

Whitetree Network Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) has named Kurt Bauer vice president of marketing and business development.

Design Acceleration has promoted Steve Pollock to director of marketing and business development. Sanjay Patel has been hired as major accounts executive. They also hired Steve Fenstermaker as manager of customer support.

Silicon Valley Research (Mountain View, CA) has appointed Randall L. Smith vice president of marketing to replace Arthur E. B. Monk , who has been made vice president of corporate development.

Paul Lippe has been promoted to vice president of business development and legal at Synopsys .com/isdweb/&lf=isd-sendtolog"> Synopsys (Mountain View, CA)

3M (Austin, TX) has named Joseph A. Giordano division president for the 3M Electronic Products Division.

Harris Electronic Design Automation (Fishers, NY) has made several new appointments. Donald Reaves has joined the firm as senior principal software engineer; Gregory Gray as senior software engineer; Michael Miller as manager of information technology; and Elliot Sobel as lead software engineer for PC applications development. Harris EDA has also promoted Vess Johnson to vice president of engineering, and Hemant Shah to director of CAE engineering.

LogicVision (San Jose, CA) has hired Patrick Scoggin as vice president of sales and marketing. They also hired Benoit Nadeau-Dostie as chief scientist. Michael Howells has assumed the position of vice president.

Isadore T. Katz has been hired as vice president of marketing by Chrysalis Symbolic Design (Billerica, MA). In addition, Michael R. Lanagan has joined Chrysalis as vice president of sales.

A. Travis White , has joined Sony Semiconductor Co. of America (San Jose, CA) as the new company's first president. He was also named senior vice president of Sony Semiconductor Co. of Japan (Atsugi, Japan).

Catherine Kitcho has joined Siemens Rolm Communications (Santa Clara, CA) as senior program manager in the Alliances group.

MoneyBits

SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (St. Genis Pouilly) announced revenues for 1994 of $2.6 billion, up 30 percent from the previous year's revenues of $2 billion; net earnings were $362.5 million, up 126 percent from the previous year's $160 million. For the fourth quarter 1994 (ended Dec. 31), revenues were $710 million, up 30 percent over the same term the previous year. Net earnings were up from $31.5 million to $109.2 million.

Aspect Development (Mountain View, CA) announced 1994 results that include $11 million in bookings and revenues of $8.5 million, representing a 115 percent growth over 1993.

Technology Modeling Associates year-end revenues for fiscal 1994 (ended Dec. 31) were $12 million.

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