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

In the News

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) has announced what may be the first design tool written in Java. Viewware, a viewing and cross-referencing technology for accessing wire harness designs and related design data, can run on any platform that supports a Java virtual machine. The client displays information in the viewer's native language and allows users to query schematics, zooming in and out while maintaining picture integrity.

The company also made an unsolicited bid for Quickturn Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) at a price of about $12 per share. Quickturn's share price subsequently rose to $11, a $3 increase. Mentor, which has already acquired more than 3 percent of Quickturn's common stock, is filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to call a special meeting of Quickturn's stockholders to replace Quickturn's board of directors with Mentor Graphics' nominees. The company expects that the $216 million transaction would save $30 million annually by the year 2000, resulting in large part from reductions in litigation expenses incurred for Quickturn's lawsuit against Mentor and Mentor's countersuit.

Verisity, Ltd. (Mountain View, Calif.) and Denali Software, Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.) have entered into a joint marketing agreement whereby Verisity will provide mutual customers with a flow that integrates Denali's memory models with Verisity's functional verification environment. The agreement will enable system-on-a-chip designers to generate memories using Denali's Memory Modeler that run with Specman, Verisity's functional verification tool, through either the Verilog programming language or C interface.

Quicklogic Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) announced a new class of devices to speed the development of complex systems. Embedded Standard Products (ESPs) consist of predetermined functions customized and supported by user-configurable logic on one piece of silicon. The basic ESP includes a programmable logic array, a standard function, and an interface that allows customization of the standard function as well as communication between the standard and programmable sections. The first ESP product offering is an embedded RAM family.

The company also announced an out-of-court settlement with Actel Corp. (also in Sunnyvale) of all pending litigation between the companies. The suits and countersuits, which involved antifuse FPGA integrated circuit device technology, date back to 1994. The settlement includes cross licenses that protect all existing FPGA products of both companies for the lives of those products. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (Singapore) and Virtual Silicon Technology, Inc. (Sunnyvale) have formed a joint marketing and technical support agreement under which customers using Virtual Silicon's Diplomat-25 libraries will have access to Chartered's 0.25-µm foundry services.

The VHDL International Users' Forum will host "Workshops '98: VHDL for Power Users" October 26­28 at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Orlando, Fla. Workshops '98 replaces VIUF's traditional fall conference and is designed to promote interactive exchange of ideas and experiences among attendees. In an informal workshop and tutorial format, presentations and discussions will address moderate- to advanced-level topics to appeal to experienced VHDL users. The program will also include the BMAS '98 Workshop for analog and mixed-signal designers. Contact Yvonne Ryan at (408) 654-1600 or yryan@vhdl.org to register.

Summit Design, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) has acquired Finnish software company Prosoft Oy , whose principal products are complementary to Summit's hardware/software coverification product, V-CPU. The acquisition, finalized on June 30, involved the issuance of approximately 250,000 shares of Summit common stock. The integration of Prosoft's E-Sim with V-CPU allows developers of embedded software earlier access to a virtual prototype that can run at near-real-time simulation speeds.

Intermedius Design Integration (San Jose) has released Version 4.0 of the Intermediate Data Format. The IDF is a file format specification for exchanging printed circuit assembly information between PCB layout and mechanical design and analysis applications. IDF 4.0 adds support for conductor shapes, graphics, annotations, figures, footprints, sublayouts, enhanced 3D part shape representation, embedded and printed components, component pin locations, and other properties. An industrywide implementation program will run 18 months with a targeted starting date of early in the fourth quarter.

The VHDL RTL Synthesis Standard , known as IEEE 1076.6 and based on existing standards IEEE 1076 and 1164, has passed IEEE balloting. It will serve as a standard syntax and semantics for VHDL-based RTL synthesis to maximize design reuse and provide a foundation for the synthesis and verification of synthesized designs.

The 1998 Embedded Systems Conference is the largest ever, with 148 classes and 12 full-day tutorials. Running Nov. 1­5 at the San Jose Convention Center, the conference features classes on such topics as digital signal processing and wireless technologies. For engineers new to embedded systems, many classes also cover basic topics, including C and C++ real-time programming, debugging strategies, kernels, and interrupt handling. Each day of the conference begins with "birds of a feather" discussion groups. Contact Liz Austin at (888) 239-5563 or esc@mfi.com to register.

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (San Diego) has formed a long-term agreement with IBM Corp. (East Fishkill, N.Y.) entitling AMCC to advanced access and use of IBM's current and future generations of silicon-germanium biCMOS processes and libraries.

Synopsys , Inc. (Mountain View) has become a member of the Semiconductor Research Corp. , the chip industry's long-term research consortium. The company joins SRC's 37 member companies, which pool funding and provide support for university research projects in design sciences. Members also participate in numerous SRC-sponsored programs, including Techcon, the semiconductor R&D and job-networking symposium held in Las Vegas, Nev.

This year's PCB Design Conference East will be held at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlboro, Mass., Oct. 12­16 (exhibitions on Oct. 13 and 14). Additions to the technical program this year include a packaging and manufacturing technology track and a design excellence curriculum course on advanced PCB microvia design. Participating PCB designers will compete against one another to determine who is "top gun." Contact (617) 828-9185 or pcb@exporeg.com to register.

PADS Software (Marlboro, Mass.), a supplier of Windows-based PCB layout software, will hold its first annual users' conference at the Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach, Calif., Nov. 2­4. Technical demonstrations and presentations on PADS-PowerPCB and PADS-PowerBGA, as well as roundtable discussions and Q&A sessions on industry trends, will be featured. The conference will also hold vendor sessions, including presentations from ACT, Cadence, Hyperlynx, and Viewlogic. For registration, contact (888) 649-5565 or www.pads.com by Oct. 19.

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) has expanded its Education Services operation with the acquisition of Esperan, Ltd ., a privately held independent EDA training and education company based in Ramsbury, U.K. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

At the 35th Design Automation Conference , held June 15­19 in San Francisco's Moscone Center, more than 230 exhibitors helped draw a record 21,500 attendees from technology companies and universities around the world. Increased international attendance, totaling 1,373 engineers from 36 countries, as well as doubled exhibits-only and free Monday registration, was largely responsible for this year's 20 percent overall increase in attendance. Next year's conference will be held June 21­25 in New Orleans.

Movers and Shakers

John Stressing has joined Applied Microsystems Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) as vice president of worldwide sales. He was formerly vice president of worldwide sales at Ikos Systems. Douglas Fullaway , former vice president of worldwide sales, has been promoted to executive vice president.

UMC Group (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has appointed Christopher A. Bettis vice president of information technology and group planning. Bettis will be responsible for the implementation of information systems and demand-supply forecasting. He formerly served as vice president and CFO at Twinstar Semiconductor, where he was responsible for both control and treasury activities.

James O. Benouis , president and COO of Silicon Valley Research, Inc. (San Jose), has become the new CEO of the company. Benouis assumed his former positions in March when the company acquired QIC, an IC design consulting company of which he had been president since 1995. Former CEO Robert R. Anderson will remain chairman of the board of directors.

Tower Semiconductor, Ltd. (San Jose) has named Reuven Marko vice president of marketing and sales. Prior to his new appointment, Marko served as Tower's director of marketing and sales.

Silicon Integration Initiative, Inc. members elected the 1998­1999 board of directors: K. C. Murphy , executive vice president, Cadence Design Systems; Jan-Olof Kismalm , director of microelectronics coordination, LM Ericsson Telefon; Mark McDermott, director of system-on-a-chip design technology, Motorola; Norbert Diesing , manager of methodology development, Nortel Semiconductor; and Jeff Barton , manager of semiconductor mass marketing, Texas Instruments. All four officers have been reelected: John Darringer , manager of EDA strategy at IBM, chairman; Andrew Graham , president of SI2, vice chairman; Don Guiou , vice president and general manager of mixed-signal IC design at Mentor Graphics, treasurer; and Hitoshi Yoshizawa , assistant general manager of NEC Corp.'s System ASIC Division, board secretary.

Virtual Silicon Technology (Sunnyvale) has named Al Lipinski vice president of global business operations. Lipinski has two decades of experience in technology sales and marketing for EDA companies, including Meta-Software, Dazix, and Computervision. He most recently served as vice president of worldwide sales at Exemplar.

Shoichiro Yoshida , president of Nikon Corp. (Tokyo), has been elected chairman of the board of directors of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Mountain View, Calif.). Yoshida is the first Japanese chairman of the SEMI board and succeeds Peter Younger , vice president and general manager of Eaton Corp. A member of the SEMI board since 1990, Yoshida was elected vice chairman in 1997.

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) has appointed Smith McKeithen senior vice president and general counsel and Ron Kirchenbauer senior vice president of human resources. Cadence has also appointed new members to its senior executive management team: Kevin Bushby , vice president and general manager of Cadence Europe; Jean-Claude Broido , vice president and general manager of Cadence Asia-Pacific; and Kiyotaka Fujii , president of Cadence Japan.

Altera Corp. (San Jose) has appointed Nigel Toon to the position of vice president and managing director of Altera Europe. Toon has been with Altera for nine years, joining as a field application engineer. Since then he has held various positions, including European marketing manager and managing director, Europe.

Synopsys , Inc. (Mountain View) has named Edmund K. Cheng to the newly created position of vice president of research and development for its Epic Technology Group. In his new role, Cheng is responsible for managing Epic's worldwide R&D teams in developing interconnect- and transistor-based extraction, simulation, analysis, and verification tools. He was previously president and CEO of Anagram, which was acquired by Avanti in 1996.

Money Bits

Xynetix Design Systems, Inc. (Fishers, N.Y.) has closed $4.2 million in new financing from a group lead by its original investors, Fidelity Capital, Zero Stage Capital, and Harris Corp., along with a new investor, North Atlantic Capital.

Silicon Valley Research, Inc. (San Jose) posted second-quarter revenues of $593,000, compared with $713,000 for the second quarter of 1997 and $506,000 for the previous quarter. The company reported a net loss for the current quarter of just over $1.5 million, compared with a net loss of nearly $4 million for the comparable quarter of the prior year, which included approximately $2.2 million of nonrecurring charges. Net loss per share for this quarter was $0.06, versus a net loss of $0.25 for the second quarter of 1997. Results for the quarter include the operating activity of Quality IC Corp., which was acquired on March 31. A second-quarter private placement of equity securities increased the company's capital base by approximately $2 million.

Virage Logic (Fremont, Calif.) has received $3.5 million in funding from a group of more than 20 private and corporate investors. The new funding will be used primarily to increase support and distribution efforts of its current product line and to develop new products. The company's 0.18-µm products will be introduced by end of 1998.

Microchip Technology, Inc. (Chandler, Ariz.) reported improved net sales and earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 1999, ended June 30. Net sales for the quarter were $99.5 million, up 2 percent from sales of $97.2 million in the prior year's first quarter. Net income for the quarter, prior to the effects of special charges of $5.5 million, was $16.8 million, down 6 percent from net income of $17.8 million in the same quarter of last year. Diluted earnings per share prior to the special charge were $0.31, a drop from the $0.32 of the prior year's first quarter. Including the effects of the special charges, net income was $12.7 million and diluted EPS was $0.23. The special charges were related to the settlement of an intellectual property lawsuit, the write-off of obsolete product inventory, and the restructuring of a portion of the company's sales operation.

The DII Group, Inc. (Niwot, Colo.) reported second-quarter 1998 net revenues of $221.9 million, up 21 percent from $184.1 million a year ago. Net income was $6.1 million, or 23 cents per diluted share, compared with $7.5 million, or 27 cents per diluted share, in the second quarter of 1997. The lower earnings level was due to underutilization of assets associated with general softness in the electronics industry. Revenues for the first six months were $457.3 million, up 42 percent from $321.2 million in the same period last year. Net income for the first half was $13.0 million, excluding a $38.9 million after-tax restructuring charge that was taken in the first quarter. In the first half of 1997, the company's net income was $12.6 million. Thomas J. Smach, DII's chief financial officer, expects modest sequential improvement in the third quarter, and diluted earnings per share of about 45 to 50 cents in the fourth quarter.

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integrated system design  October 1998