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

In the News

In a move that may further the cause of Cadence in its lawsuit against Avanti Corp. (Fremont, Calif.), a Santa Clara County grand jury has indicted Avanti president and CEO Gerald Hsu and other Avanti employees for the theft of trade secrets. The indictment alleges that the former Cadence employees took proprietary Cadence technology with them when they left to start Avanti's predecessor company, Arcsys. Hsu says that he expects vindication in the case, which, starting with Cadence's initial suit, has now lasted for nearly two years.

The North American semiconductor equipment industry posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.84 for November--a 27-point improvement over September--reports Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Mountain View, Calif.). Three-month average shipments in November were $963 million. The figure is 15 percent above the October level, yet 41 percent below the November 1997 level. Three-month average bookings increased to $805 million, 29 percent above the October level and 51 percent below the November 1997 level.

At a meeting prior to Semicon Japan (Tokyo), financial analysts and industry executives predicted a 1999 recovery of the global semiconductor equipment and materials industry, driven by a number of factors: a return to a balance in supply and demand in semiconductor devices, increased reliance on non-PC applications, and fundamental changes in the way chips are made. Predictions on the timing of the recovery ranged from the first quarter to the third quarter of the year.

Altera Corp. (San Jose) will secure an additional 5 percent ownership in Wafertech (Camas, Wash.), a joint venture semiconductor manufacturing facility. The joint venture's partners include TSMC, Altera, Analog Devices, and Integrated Silicon Solutions. Wafertech began initial volume production in the third quarter and is expected to ramp into commercial volume in 1999. Under the terms of the agreement, Altera will pay $37.5 million to bring its total equity position in Wafertech to 23 percent.

More than 100 representatives from semiconductor, foundry, and EDA companies and organizations attended the first Standard Interconnect Process Parameters (SIPPs) specification standards meeting held recently in Santa Clara, Calif. Attendees agreed that a tool-independent interconnect characterization is useful and timely, helping process experts to communicate the capabilities of their technology to designers. Silicon Integration Initiative, Inc. has taken over leadership of the SIPPs development effort and expects to complete SIPPs standardization within one year.

Summit Design, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) will support VHDL+, an extended hardware description language from International Computers, Ltd. (London). VHDL+ facilitates a move to a higher level of abstraction by allowing system-level designers to capture system specifications in a simulatable form--using one tenth the lines of code required with a behavioral-level VHDL. It is compatible with existing VHDL models and, through its mixed multilevel modeling capability, ensures that the final RTL VHDL used for logic synthesis fully meets the requirements of the original specification. Summit and ICL plan to start providing support for VHDL+ in June.

Atmel Corp. (San Jose) has established A.P.K. Engineering (Agoura Hills, Calif.) as a design center to provide system-level design services, FPGA design flow and technical support, and intellectual property development and integration for Atmel's FPGA customers.

ARM, Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.) has formed the ARM Technology Access Program (ATAP) to satisfy the demand for ARM-based system-on-a-chip designs by OEMs, as well as to serve ARM's semiconductor partners that need additional design resources. All designs created through an ATAP design partner must be fabricated by one of ARM's licensed semiconductor partners. ARM will train, qualify, and equip a network of approved design partners with ARM hardware and software tools for integrating ARM CPU cores and AMBA bus peripherals into ASIC and SOC designs. Each approved design center will be subject to a capability audit and must demonstrate its own unique skills in specific technology domains as well as market segment expertise. The ATAP also affords additional customer benefits, such as geographic and time-zone locality and local language support. The first design partner is Cadence's SOC Design Centre in Livingston, Scotland.

As part of a pending lawsuit, Music Semiconductors (Hackettstown, N.J.) has filed a claim for patent infringement against Netlogic Microsystems, Inc. (New York). Music contends that Netlogic willfully infringed Music's memory with CAM and RAM partitions patent that was granted in 1995. Music has asked the court to enter an injunction barring continued infringement and is seeking monetary damages from Netlogic.

Red Hat Software, Inc. (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) and Ingram Micro, Inc. (Santa Ana, Calif.) have partnered to bring the official Red Hat Linux 5.2 operating system, as well as other Red Hat products, to such major retailers as Best Buy and Electronics Boutique, catalog retailers, and on-line resellers. The Red Hat and Ingram agreement allows retail customers to purchase the official Red Hat Linux OS with 90 days of installation support directly from Red Hat. Though Red Hat Linux's licensing model allows other publishers to sell unofficial Red Hat Linux, the Official Red Hat Linux 5.2 will be the only officially supported version of Red Hat Linux available at retail. Red Hat has also announced new authorized reseller programs that will provide support and sales programs to corporate users running official Red Hat Linux at the enterprise level.

Design Acceleration, Inc. (San Jose) has launched the DAI Transaction Partners Program, a partnership with IP and verification IP vendors who intend to make their products compatible with DAI's transaction viewing and recording tools. The first three partners are Denali Software, Integrated Intellectual Property, and Palmchip. The program provides the technology access required to add transaction-level viewing to IP with only minor modification to current display mechanisms.

Duet Technologies, Inc. (San Jose) has moved its corporate headquarters to a new site in San Jose. The company is leasing a 30,000-square foot building that will accommodate over 150 employees.

Movers and Shakers

John J. Rogers, Jr. is the new executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer of PADS Software, Inc. (Marlborough, Mass.) He has over 18 years of domestic and international experience, most recently as executive vice president, CFO, and treasurer of Cognex.

Senté, Inc. (Acton, Mass.) has named two senior EDA executives to manage its new European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Sales manager Alan Page has more than 15 years' experience with major EDA companies, including Antrim Design Systems and Viewlogic, where he was director of ASIC solutions. He was also the European founder of Vantage Analysis Systems. Beate Page , previously with Siroyan Technology, is the new technical manager. She has spent more than 10 years in the European EDA business with Compass Design Automation and Viewlogic. She has also worked at VLSI Technology and in Hitachi's product marketing organization, specializing in embedded-processor ASICs.

TransEDA, Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.) has named John E. Perry as general manager. Perry joined TransEDA from Sand Microelectronics, where he was vice president of sales and marketing. He has more than 20 years' experience in technical and management positions, including 9 years in the EDA field. Before joining Sand, Perry held a number of senior sales and marketing management positions with Cadence, Vantage, and Texas Instruments.

As part of a restructuring of its worldwide corporation, the Zuken-Redac Group, Ltd. in Bristol, U.K., has appointed John Sliney its U.S. manager and vice president of marketing and sales and Paul Ewing its North American vice president of sales. Prior to joining Zuken-Redac, Sliney provided strategic and business development counseling to a number of Silicon Valley start-ups in the IC design industry. He has served in a number of marketing and business development roles for such companies as Cadence Design Systems, Calma, EDA Systems, Frequency Technology, and Meta Software. Ewing is a business development executive with 16 years' experience in developing and executing rapid-growth sales programs.

John Sanguinetti has joined the board of directors of Novas Software, Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.). The founder of Chronologic and an architect of the VCS Verilog simulator, he has been active in computer architecture, performance analysis, and design verification for over 20 years. He has worked for several computer manufacturers--DEC, Amdahl, ELXSI, Ardent, and Next--and with several start-up companies in both MCAD and EDA.

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Camarillo, Calif.) has named five new vice presidents. Yatin Mody , vice president and controller, began his career at Vitesse in 1992 as manager of cost accounting and budgets and was promoted to controller in 1993. As vice president of the Dallas design center, Jim McDonald will also be responsible for the operation of design centers located in Richardson, Texas, and Melbourne, Fla. He started his career at Vitesse in 1985 as a member of the technical staff and has since held several design management positions. Roy Carew , the new vice president of assembly and test, has been at Vitesse for over 11 years in various managerial positions in test engineering, most recently as director of assembly and test. Prior to that, he worked in the GaAs research group at Rockwell International and was test engineering manager at Pacesetter. Patrick Jenkins , vice president of Colorado Springs wafer fabrication, joined Vitesse in 1997 as a member of the start-up team that brought the fab into production. He has over 20 years' experience in the industry in various technical and management positions at Atmel, Inmos, Intel, and UTMC. Mike Yeager , the new vice president of the Colorado Springs design center, has over 17 years' experience in digital and memory design as well as high-level technical management, most recently at Ramtron International as vice president of ferroelectric RAM design.

Dale Paulin has joined OrCAD, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) as director of corporate marketing. He previously worked at Commercepath, where he was director of marketing and communications. Prior to that, he was a regional marketing manager for Unisys and held marketing and account management positions with Wang Laboratories and NCR.

Sagantec (Fremont, Calif.) has tapped Jahan Honardoost to be its vice president of North American sales. A veteran EDA sales manager, he most recently served as director of business development for Synopsys. Previously, he worked as sales director for Compass Design Automation, a senior major account manager at Mentor Graphics, a senior account manager at Hewlett-Packard, and a national sales manager at Fujitsu America.

Applied Microelectronics, Inc. (Halifax, N.S.) has announced five staff appointments: Jim Tompkins, manager of product development; Denise King , manager of VME/PMC; Bruce Oakley , manager of embedded systems hardware technology; Roger Boutilier , manager of financial accounting; and Condea Krewenki , manager of corporate communications.

Money Bits

Third-quarter revenues for Gatefield Corp. (Fremont, Calif.) were just over $1 million, compared with $4.4 million in the corresponding quarter last year. The net loss in the third quarter was $288,000, or $0.01 per diluted share, versus a loss of $4.3 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, for the third quarter of 1997. For the nine-month period ended Sept. 30, 1998, revenues were over $6.3 million--compared with $12.3 million for the same period in the prior year. The net loss for the first nine months of 1998 was just under $5.6 million, or $0.14 per share. For the comparable period in 1997, the net loss was $11.8 million or $0.45 per share. During the quarter, the company received a request to redeem approximately $4.6 million of its Series B preferred stock. The board of directors assembled a subcommittee to review the request and assess whether applicable law permits the redemption.

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integrated system design  February 1999