IN THE NEWS Business and technology news from the semiconductor and design tool industries.

In the News

IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) and FTL Systems (Rochester, Minn.) demonstrated a 10-million-gate simulation at the 35th annual Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, using IBM's RS/6000 SP supercomputer and prerelease code for FTL's Auriga VHDL and VHDL-AMS compiled simulator. Auriga can compile and simulate designs of 10 million to 1 billion gate equivalents.

EDA veterans Mike Tsai, Steven Wang, and Ren-Song Tsay have formed Axis Systems, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). The company plans to introduce a new class of design verification tool later this year. Its product incorporates verification software and reconfigurable computing (RCC) hardware to improve simulation and verification throughput for designs of 1 million gates plus. Tsai was a cofounder and president of Arcsys, Wang a cofounder and the vice president of engineering of Precedence, and Tsaya founding engineer and the chief architect of Avanti. They've been joined by Ping Tseng, an expert on parallel computation who was the chief architect of Synopsys 's Cyclone cycle-based VHDL simulator.

Duet Technologies, Inc. (San Jose) has signed a development agreement with Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. (San Jose) to deliver a library of 0.25-µm I/O cells. Under the terms of the agreement, FMI will outsource the complete development of proprietary I/O library cells for its 0.25-µm semiconductor process to Duet Technologies.The I/Os will also be crafted and optimized to work in both pad- and core-limited designs, as well as in mixed 2.5- and 3.3-V designs. The amount of the contract was not specified.

Ambit Design Systems, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) introduced the Buildbridges Alliance, a program for formal relationships with third-party tool providers. Partners will work jointly with Ambit to support customer flows. In addition to including previously announced technology partners Cadence Design Systems, Chrysalis Symbolic Design, and Senté, Buildbridges has established relationships with a broad spectrum of other EDA companies, including CAE Plus, Escalade, Genesys, Ikos, InterHDL, Mentor Graphics, Verysys, Virtual Silicon, and many others.

Simplex Solutions, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) announced that IBM Microelectronics (Essex Junction, Vt.) will provide prevalidated Simplex interconnect extraction models to IBM customers. Initial efforts will focus on IBM's 0.25-µm process and will result in the development of Simplex interconnect extraction models, called Icecaps, expected to be available for use with Simplex's Fire & Ice full-chip 3D extraction tool by September. The two companies will also perform silicon validation of Fire & Ice's accuracy using Simplex's new "active" test chip methodology.

Virtual Silicon Technology, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has selected Aquarius Technologies SA/NV (Brussels) to provide sales management throughout Europe for the company's physical library and semiconductor IP products. Aquarius has offices in Brussels and Sweden, as well as a liaison office in California. Virtual Silicon also recently launched the IP Ambassador Program, an initiative formalizing the company's partnerships with third-party IP providers. The charter members are Argonaut RISC Cores, Coreel Microsystems, Coreum Technology, Genesys Testware, Innovative Semiconductors, Integrated Intellectual Property, Logicvision, Palmchip, Phoenix Technology, Silicon Engineering, and Technical Data Freeway. They are porting their products to support Virtual Silicon's Diplomat 0.25-µm library.

Ikos Systems, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) has completed the acquisition of certain EDA technology from Interra, Inc. (San Jose) and has opened its new R&D facility at Noida, India, near Delhi.

Movers and Shakers

Frequency Technology, Inc. (San Jose) has appointed Alain Labat president and CEO, replacing Martin Walker , founder, who becomes vice chairman and senior vice president. A 17-year veteran of the EDA industry, Labat was senior vice president of sales and marketing at Synopsys before joining Frequency. Prior to that he was with Valid Logic Systems (now part Cadence Design Systems) and Xerox's Engineering Systems Division. Frequency has also added Michel Courtoy as senior director of marketing. Courtoy has held sales and marketing positions at EDA companies, including Cadence and Quickturn Design Systems, and was most recently director of marketing for Aptix.

Thomas Gardner has been promoted to vice president of North American sales at Ikos Systems, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.), and Nader Fathi has been promoted to vice president of international sales. Gardner will be responsible for sales and customer support of the company's verification products in the U.S. and Canada. Fathi will assume responsibility for sales and customer support outside North America. In addition, he will continue to direct the company's verification services business. Gardner and Fathi assume the responsibilities of John Stressing , who has resigned as vice president of worldwide sales.

Money Bits

Credence Systems Corp. (Fremont, Calif.) reported results for its second quarter, ended April 30. Net sales were $74.7 million, a drop of 9 percent over the net sales of $82.4 million in the first quarter and an increase of 72 percent over the net sales of $43.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 1997. Net income for the quarter was $8.8 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, a decrease of 4 percent from the $9.2 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, recorded in the previous quarter and an increase of 167 percent from the $3.3 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, posted in the comparable quarter last year.

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilson-ville, Ore.), announced that sales of its Calibre physical verification tool grew 490 percent in 1997.

The DII Group, Inc. (Niwot, Colo.) announced that it expects second and third quarter results to be below analyst expectations. Soft industry conditions in general and delayed orders from several major printed circuit board customers in particular are responsible for the decline. The company still anticipates strength in the fourth quarter and in 1999.

The Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC; Northbrook, Ill.) released April figures for the U.S. printed wiring board industry. The book-to-bill ratio was 0.97. Sales billed (shipments) increased 2.5 percent over April 1997 and orders booked declined 5.6 percent. Compared with 1997, bookings of PWBs were down 1.39 percent for 1998 and shipments were up 8.5 percent year to date.

V3 Semiconductor, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) reported revenue growth at more than 40 percent year to year. Management anticipates continuous and aggressive sales growth for fiscal year 1998 and beyond. The revenue increase is based on a number of networking, imaging, and telecom customers, as well as increased sales through distribution. Second quarter revenues were up by 47 percent compared with the same quarter last fiscal year. Net income increased 182 percent compared with the same quarter last fiscal year.

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integrated system design  August 1998