IN THE NEWS

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

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) (Hsin Chu, Taiwan) announced that Chips and Technologies (San Jose, CA), Sierra Semiconductor (San Jose, CA), PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Burnaby, BC), and Brooktree (San Diego, CA) have entered into agreements designed to guarantee long-term wafer fabrication capacity. In addition, TSMC announced plans to build its first US foundry in a joint venture with Altera (San Jose, CA) and several other customers.

MINC, Inc. (Colorado Springs, CO) announced the acquisition of Innovative Synthesis Technologies (Grenoble, France), an international FPGA and ASIC synthesis company. The terms of the agreement grant MINC full acquisition of IST's assets, including its technology, products, and OEM relationships. MINC will also retain all of IST's employees.

The Software Support Professionals Association awarded Mentor Graphics (Wilsonville, OR) and Synopsys .com/isdweb/&lf=isd-sendtolog"> Synopsys (Mountain View, CA) the Software Technical Assistance Recognition (STAR) award in the "Complex Support " category.

Virtual Chips, Inc. (San Jose, CA) announced the formal name change of their company from RAVIcad, Inc.

NEPCON West '96 will be in the Anaheim Convention Center (Anaheim, CA) from February 25 through February 29. It will feature more than130 sessions on design, packaging, MCM, PCB, and other advanced technologies.

SGS-Thomson opened a regional logistics center in Singapore.

Atmel Corporation (San Jose, CA) started construction of a $500 million fabrication facility (Fab 7). The new fab is expected to come on-line in Q3 1996 and will produce 5,000 eight inch wafers per week in a 0.35µ process technology.

The Industry Council for the EDA Standards Roadmap released version 0.9 of the Roadmap to the EDA industry for comments. CFI, Inc. (Austin, TX) will collect and edit comments and plans to publish the 1.0 version in January. For more information, look up the Council home page at http://www.cfi.org/ic

Wescon '95 announced the attendance at this year's conference and exhibition at 34,794. This is a significant increase from Wescon/93 and Wescon/94, held in Anaheim.

VHDL International (Santa Clara, CA) unveiled a program to help engineering schools in the US and Japan develop HDL training and education. The program will provide training programs and provide schools with copies of the latest simulators.

Loral Space Information Systems (New York, NY) has completed a link from the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center, (Houston, TX) with the Russian Space Agency Control Center in Moscow. The link will be used in joint space shuttle and space station operations.

Microchip Technology, Inc. (Chandler, AZ) announced it has acquired the Keeloq hopping code technology and patents developed by Nanoteq of South Africa, along with the worldwide marketing rights.

Router Solutions, Inc. (Newport Beach, CA) has expanded its operation and created a Custom Integration Services division.

CAST, Inc. (Pomona, CA) announced that it is shipping and supporting VHDL simulation models of the Pentium and Pentium Pro processors from Intel (Redmond, OR).

Knights Technology, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) announced that it has opened a new facility in Austin, TX. The new office will provide technical and customer support for fabs in the region and will expand to include product development in the future.

Samsung Semiconductor (San Jose, CA) announced an aggressive drive into the microcontroller market with plans to introduce 50 new products over the next two years. Samsung's heavy investment in the microcontroller market is expected to ease market shortages that have led other microcontroller vendors to place products on allocation.

Savantage, Inc. (Austin, TX) named Itochu Techno-Science Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) as its exclusive representative to market and sell Savansys to the Japanese electronics industry.

Viewlogic Systems, Inc. announced it has acquired all of the outstanding capital stock of Silerity, Inc. (Pasadena, CA). Under the purchase agreement, Viewlogic will pay approximately $5.6 million in cash plus certain contingent payments tied to future sales. The merger will be accounted for as a cash purchase and Viewlogic will charge approximately $6 million in one-time, non-recurring costs, primarily reflecting in-progress R&D costs in the current quarter.

As additional production capacity has come on-line, industry analysts are predicting a softening in DRAM memory pricing. Nevertheless, market research firm VLSI Research Inc. (San Jose, CA) sees only a slight drop in the overall semiconductor book-to-bill ratio, down 0.02 from the 1.14 November figure. The semiconductor equipment book-to-bill will jump to 1.14, indicating continued strong demand from new fab construction.

Movers and Shakers

Synario Design Automation appointed Dr. Mark Flomenhoft as director of engineering. He will oversee engineering and ongoing strategic alliances. In addition, Synario appointed Jacquie Taylor as strategic marketing manager. She will be responsible for strategic planning and business development activities.

In his latest market research report, Teleconferencing Markets and Strategies: the Convergence of Price, Performance, and Plumbing , Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts (Tempe, AZ) sees a booming video conferencing market. Video conferencing carried over Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks, followed by cable television and analog phones (POTS) all have an annual compound growth rate of over one-hundred percent.

Silicon Valley Research promoted Dr. Teng-Sheng Moh to the position of vice-president of engineering.

Cadence Design Systems adds five industry veterans to the marketing team. Richard Wyckoff is the new vice-president of corporate marketing and will be responsible for the corporate marketing programs, including advertising, public relations, marketing communications, the World Wide Web, and sales tools. Pamela D. Meyers is director of services marketing and will market the consulting and professional design services offerings. David B. Milam is the new director of marketing programs. He will handle third-party marketing programs. William H. Booth is a director of marketing , responsible for the Windows/PC Steven L. Glaser is director of market development. He will develop strategies and programs for leading-edge customer requirements.

Ashena Massoumi has joined Exemplar Logic as the product marketing manager for Galileo. She joins Exemplar Logic from Intel where she oversaw the product definition of the Low-Power processor product.

MoneyBits

Lattice Semiconductor Corp. (Hillsboro, OR) announced the sale of 2,500,000 shares of its common stock. The net proceeds to the company will be used for expansion and maintenance of their wafer supply and assembly capacity.

Silicon Valley Research (Mountain View, CA) announced a filing of registration statement for an offering of 4 million shares of stock. The net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including working capital and capital expenditures.

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integrated system design  February 1996