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In the News

Newport Wafer-Fab, Ltd. (Newport, South Wales) has selected Artisan Components, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) to provide Process Perfect standard-cell libraries, I/O libraries, and embedded SRAM generators for NWL's 0.5- and 0.35-µm CMOS technologies. In a multimillion dollar deal between the two companies, NWL received the distribution rights to the libraries and generators. The foundry will offer use of these libraries and generators to its customers and design partners for a nominal NRE. Cell libraries and SRAM generators for 0.5-µm technologies are available to NWL customers immediately.

RAPID (Reusable Application-Specific Intellectual Property Developers; Dallas) has selected the Market Statistics Service of the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (San Jose) as the source of its IP market revenue data. Many of RAPID's 40 members are reporting or plan to report their IP revenues to EDAC.

The In-Stat Group (Scottsdale, Ariz.) recently concluded a study of the $137 billion semiconductor industry. Overall, the industry grew 4 percent in 1997, the market research firm says, reversing a 1996 loss of 8.6 percent.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has reached an agreement in principle to settle the class action securities lawsuit currently pending against the company and certain of its current and former officers and directors. The agreement to settle is subject to the approval of AMD's board of directors and confirmation by the United States District Court in San Jose. The suit was filed in November 1995 and related to the company's K5 microprocessor development project. If approved, the cost of the settlement to the company would be $11.5 million. The company is adjusting its previously disclosed first quarter of 1998 results to reflect the settlement. That adjustment, net of tax, increases the quarterly loss by $0.05 per share to nearly $63 million.

Sand Microelectronics, Inc. (San Jose) has relocated corporate offices from Sunnyvale, Calif., to San Jose to accommodate the rapid growth in its business. Sand's revenues and number of employees has more than doubled over the past year.

Sagantec North America (Milpitas, Calif.) has acquired MicroCAD (Haifa, Israel), a developer of physical design software. The value of the acquisition hasn't been disclosed.

Fifteen DSP-based system design companies announced plans to integrate their products with VisualDSP development tools from Analog Devices, Inc. (Norwood, Mass.). ADI's first VisualDSP partners include Alacron, Alex Computer Systems, Eonic Systems, Hyperception, Ixthos, Sky Computers, Spectrum Signal Processing, and White Mountain DSP. The VisualDSP production release, planned for June, will support ADI's 32-bit ADSP-2106x SHARC DSPs.

Ikos Systems, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) announced a record order for its logic emulation systems in its fiscal second quarter. From Nvidia Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), the contract is for the recently introduced Virtualogic-8 and Avatar-8 emulation systems, which will be used in the development of Nvidia's future 3D processors for the mainstream PC market.

Phoenix Technologies, Ltd. (San Jose) expanded its support for the integrated MediaGX processor family from Cyrix Corp. (Richardson, Texas). Phoenix will provide support for the MediaGXm and the MediaGX/CX5510, CX5520, and CX5520. The companies will also develop design support for mobile and specialized applications.

Phoenix also completed a definitive merger agreement with Award Software International, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) Shareholders of Award will receive 1.225 shares of Phoenix common stock for each share of Award common stock. The companies anticipate that they'll close the merger by June 30, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. Phoenix will be the surviving corporate entity. Jack Kay will continue as the president and CEO, and George Huang will report to Kay as president of the Award Software subsidiary and senior vice president of strategic business development. Huang also will be vice chairman of Phoenix's board.

Genrad, Inc. (Westford, Mass.) has acquired the Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) business unit of Valstar Systems, Ltd. (Aberdeen, Scotland). MES provides integration services and support for Shop Floor Data Manager (SFDM) from Industrial Computer Corp. (Atlanta), also recently acquired by Genrad. The MES acquisition is a cash transaction for an undisclosed sum and will be accounted for as a purchase of assets. The business will report to GR Software, Genrad's newly created software business unit, and to Genrad's European sales and support operations.

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) announced that Advanced Bionics Corp. (Sylmar, Calif.), a manufacturer of electronic cochlear implants for the profoundly hearing impaired, has standardized on Mentor's analog/mixed-signal simulation and IC layout tools to develop advanced processors for its Clarion implant family. Advanced Bionics has adopted Mentor's complete analog/mixed-signal suite, including Eldo, Quicksim, and Modelsim simulation tools, and the AccusimII-Continuum analog/mixed-signal environment.

Summit Design, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) has supplied five seats of its Visual HDL package to University College, Cork (Cork City, Ireland), to help students learn more about up-to-the-minute design automation tools and to put their knowledge into practice. The department of electrical engineering and microelectronics at University College, Cork has the five floating licenses initially for a year for the Visual HDL Pro PC software, including simulator interfaces, which can be used by anyone on its 20-user Windows NT network.

Siemens AG (Munich and Berlin), and Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector (Austin, Texas) celebrated the formal opening of White Oak Semiconductor, their $1.5 billion jointly owned semiconductor manufacturing facility near Richmond, Va. The 800,000-square-foot facility is designed for fully integrated wafer manufacturing, assembly, and final test. Asyst Technologies, Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) has finalized its acquisition from Fluoroware, Inc. (Chaska, Minn.) of the Fluorotrac automated radio frequency identification technology for automated work-in-progress tracking in semiconductor factories.

Movers and Shakers

The Electronic Design Automation Consortium has elected a new board of directors to serve the organization through June 2000. Aart de Geus, chairman and CEO of Synopsys , Inc., who finishes his term as vice chairman, has been elected chairman. Walden Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics Corp. and previous EDA Consortium chairman, will serve along with Kathryn Kranen, president and CEO of Verisity Design, Inc. as vice chairman. The newly elected board members are Prakash Bhalerao, president and CEO of Ambit Design Systems, Inc.; John P. Eurich, president and CEO of Engineering Dataxpress, Inc.; Jack Harding, president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, Inc.; Penny Herscher, president and CEO of Simplex Solutions, Inc.; Amr Mohsen, president and CEO of Aptix Corp.; and Gerry Musgrave, chairman and COO of Abstract, Inc. The board has also appointed Robert Gardner, president and CEO of Faspparts, Inc., treasurer. Pamela Parrish will continue in her role as executive director of the consortium, and Mark White, a partner at White & Lee, will continue as corporate secretary.

Duet Technologies, Inc. (San Jose) appointed William J. Harding of Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and David Strohm of Greylock to the company's board of directors. Mark Goldman was named to the newly created position of senior vice president of sales, with responsibility for Duet's worldwide operations.

Chrysalis Symbolic Design, Inc. (North Billerica, Mass.) named Isadore Katz company president and Hal Conklin vice president of worldwide sales and services. Allan L. Wallack will assume the role of CEO and chairman of the board. Lee LaFrance will handle corporate applications engineering in addition to product management of Design Verifyer.

Robert Nalesnik has joined Sand Microelectronics, Inc. (San Jose) as vice president of marketing, reporting to company president and cofounder Anand Naidu. Sand also appointed two sales managers to its new direct sales office. John Griswold joins the company as East Coast sales manager, and Gordon Halfpap has been promoted to West Coast sales manager.

OrCAD, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) named William Cibulsky senior vice president of worldwide sales. He will report directly to Mike Bosworth, OrCAD's chairman and president.

Cygnus Solutions (Sunnyvale, Calif.) promoted William Ross to vice president of worldwide sales. Ross was formerly the managing director of North American sales.

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. (Singapore) named two new vice presidents to lead its research and development efforts. John E. Martin joins Chartered as vice president, research and development, and Subhash Gupta joins the company as fellow and vice president, advanced technology. Both men report to the president and CEO, Tan Bock Seng.

TSMC USA (San Jose) made five additions to its management team. Sheldon Wu and Chen-Chung have been named directors of account management. David J. Keller and Brad B. Paulsen have joined the company as directors of account management, and Kurt Wolf has joined as director of marketing.

Money Bits

Duet Technologies, Inc. (San Jose) received $22 million in its first round of outside funding. The investors are Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, Greylock, and Technology Crossover Ventures.

Synopsys , Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) posted revenues of $170.1 million and net income of $25.5 million, resulting in $0.38 per share on a diluted basis, in the second quarter of 1998, ended March 31. Excluding second quarter nonrecurring charges, primarily related to the company's merger with Viewlogic Systems, Inc., net income was $33.4 million, resulting in $0.50 per diluted share. For the first six months of fiscal 1998, revenues were $344.3 million, and net income $19.1 million, or $0.28 per diluted share. In the absence of nonrecurring charges, net income for the first half was $57.1 million, or $0.85 per share on a diluted basis.

OrCAD, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) reported that demand for its Windows NT­based electronic design and component information system software and services drove revenue growth for the first quarter of 1998. Revenues increased 18 percent, to $11.6 million, up from $9.9 million for the same period in 1997. Excluding nonrecurring merger-related charges of $4.1 million, or $0.29 per diluted share (incurred in connection with its Microsim merger), net income was $1.1 million, or $0.12 per diluted share. Including nonrecurring merger-related charges, the net loss for the quarter was $1.6 million, or $0.17 per diluted share. Those figures compare with first quarter 1997 net income of $980,000, or $0.10 per diluted share.

Simplex Solutions, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has closed a new round of financing, in which Intel Corp. and Attractor Investment Management joined previous investors. Other investors in that round, which raised more than $12 million, include Mayfield Fund, Sumitomo Corp., and Worldview Technology Partners.

Ikos Systems, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) posted revenues for the second quarter, ended April 4, of $12.3 million, compared with $14.5 million for the quarter ended March 29, 1997. Net income was $404,000, or $0.05 per share, versus $2.5 million, or $0.28 per share. For the first six months of fiscal 1998, revenues were $24.4 million, versus $28.7 million for the first half of 1997. Net income for the first six months was $871,000, or $0.10 per share, compared with $4.7 million, or $0.53 per share, for the first half of 1997.

Atmel Corp. (San Jose) posted first quarter revenues of $260.3 million and net income of $17.7 million, or $0.18 per share. Included in the results is less than one month of operation of the Temic Semiconductor Group, which Atmel acquired in early March. In last year's first quarter, the company's revenues were $252.9 million, and net income was $38.7 million, or $0.38 per share.

Lattice Semiconductor Corp. (Hillsboro, Ore.) achieved record revenues, operating income, and net income for its fiscal year ended March 28. Revenues were $245.9 million, an increase of 20 percent over the $204.1 million reported last year. Net income was $56.6 million, or $2.37 per share, up 26 percent over the $45.0 million, or $1.96 per share, reported last year. Revenues for the fourth quarter were $60.2 million, an increase of 7 percent over the $56.3 million reported in the same quarter a year ago and up slightly from the $60.0 million posted last quarter. Net income for the quarter was $13.8 million, or $0.58 per share, up 8 percent from the $12.8 million, or $0.55 per share, for the same quarter a year ago.

SGS-Thomson Microelectronics Group (St. Genis, France) increased net revenues for the first quarter, ended April 4, 6 percent to $1 billion, compared with $944.9 million in the first quarter of 1997. Gross profit was $385.0 million, compared with $361.1 million in the first quarter of 1997. Operating profit was $114.9 million, up modestly from the $113.5 million reported in the comparable quarter of 1997, and net income totaled $90.2 million, or $0.65 per diluted share, compared with first quarter 1997 net income of $90.5 million, or $0.65 per diluted share.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Sunnyvale) has filed a prospectus supplement with the Securities and Exchange Commission with respect to the company's planned public offering of $400 million of subordinated notes convertible into the company's common stock. The lead underwriters are Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities and Salomon Smith Barney.

Mitel Corp. (Kanata, Ont.) has entered into an agreement to acquire the Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Business Unit of Centigram Communications Corp. (San Jose) for $22 million. Mitel will also purchase receivables and inventories related to the business for approximately $4 million, using part of its cash reserves to finance the purchases. It will add Centigram's voice messaging tools to its communications products portfolio. The business unit, which had sales of approximately $32 million in the 12 months ended Jan. 31, will become the Advanced Messaging Division within Mitel's Business Communications Systems Group. It will continue to be based in San Jose.

Watkins-Johnson Company (Palo Alto, Calif.) reported sales of $68.7 million and a net income of $9.7 million, or $1.15 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 1998, ended March 27. In 1997, first quarter sales from continuing operations amounted to $67.2 million, with a net loss of $318,000, or $0.04 per diluted share. The quarterly results reflect the sale of approximately 14 acres of unused property at the company's San Jose site for a pretax gain of $14.7 million.

Ultratech Stepper, Inc. (San Jose) announced unaudited results for the first quarter, ended March 31. Net sales were $27.8 million, versus $38.7 million for the first quarter of 1997. Net income was $361,000, or $0.02 per diluted share, compared with $4.5 million, or $0.21 per diluted share for the same period of 1997. Last year's first quarter results included a one-time charge of approximately $3.6 million, or $0.12 per share, for in-process research and development associated with the acquisition of the assets of Lepton, Inc. by the company's Ultrabeam subsidiary.

To voice an opinion on this or any Integrated System Design article, please email your message to miker@isdmag.com.

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integrated system design  June 1998

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