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

In the News

The Market Statistics Service of the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (San Jose) reports record new EDA license and services revenues for Q4 1998, as well as for the whole of 1998. The industry reported $3.26 billion in revenue for 1998 and grew by 24 percent in Q4 1998 (compared with the same period in 1997) to reach$908 million. Q4 1998 marks the 16th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. The strong results pushed the industry's annual growth figure to 21 percent for 1998. New license revenues grew 20 percent (versus Q4 1997) to reach $531 million, a new record. For the full year, new license revenues totaled $1.83 billion--up 17 percent over the 1997 figure. In Q4 '98, all three major categories--CAE, IC layout, and PCB (including new licenses and maintenance revenues)--posted double-digit growth, with IC layout growing the fastest for the eighth straight quarter, and 11 out of the last 12 quarters.

Lattice Semiconductor Corp . (Hillsboro, Ore.) will acquire Vantis Corp ., a wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices (Sunnyvale, Calif.), for $500 million in cash. The acquisition price includes the assumption of Vantis's net cash and cash equivalents, which are expected to be approximately $60 million at closing. Lattice anticipates completing the acquisition before the end of its second fiscal quarter ending in September. Based on financial results for calendar 1998, the combined revenues of the two companies would have equalled approximately $400 million.

ASIC Alliance Corp. (Woburn, Mass.) has acquired ASIC Technology Corp. (Andover, Mass.), which specializes in customized ASIC and semiconductor design for advanced proprietary applications. Under the terms of the agreement, ASIC Alliance has acquired all assets of ATC, including employees, technology, and customer relationships.

Formerly under the Program Technical Advisory Board (PTAB) of the EDA Industry Council, the System-Level Design Language (SLDL) Initiative has become part of VHDL International (Boulder, Colo.). In the future, VI intends to develop a close cooperation and joint support strategy with other standards bodies--notably Open Verilog International and the European CAD Standards Initiative--to gain unified industry support.

Open Verilog International (Los Gatos, Calif.) has voted to accept the Design Constraints specification from Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) for its standardization efforts. In addition, OVI and the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (Los Gatos) have formed a Design Constraints Working Group. Both VSIA and the System-Level Design Language Initiative are expected to adopt the OVI standard. The DC-WG is charged with defining an OVI standard for constraints, which will capture design intent that traditional modeling languages such as Verilog don't address.

Synopsys, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) and UMC Group (San Jose) have extended their partnership to ensure the migration of copper interconnect technologies. The companies are developing and validating Synopsys's layout verification and extraction design tools for UMC Group's 0.18-µm copper process. Using simulation tool-calibrated methodologies, they're developing and exchanging design data to analyze the advantages and challenges posed by designing with copper interconnect.

Chronology Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) has expanded its distribution and support channels in the U.S. and overseas. The company opened sales offices in Southern California, Maryland, and Texas, and signed new distributors in Germany, India, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. The company's sales and marketing headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. has also moved into expanded facilities.

Movers and Shakers

Chip Express Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has appointed Stephen McMinn to the position of senior vice president of sales and marketing. He has more than 20 years of marketing, sales, and management experience in the semiconductor industry. Most recently, he was vice president of North American sales for Toshiba America Electronic Components, where he worked for the last eight years. Prior to that, he served as vice president of sales and marketing for the start-up Vertex Semiconductor.

Cadabra Design Technology, Inc. (Santa Clara) has named William Knapp as its account manager for the Eastern United States. Prior to joining Cadabra, Knapp served as a senior sales representative for Cadence Design Systems. Other sales experience includes management positions with Array Analysis, CAE Systems, Compass Design Automation, GE Calma, Integrated Measurement Systems, and Mentor Graphics. Prior to his career in sales, Knapp performed design layout services for Optel, Ragen Semiconductor, RCA, and Western Electric.

Tallis Blalack has been appointed chief scientist and vice president of operations for the new U.S. subsidiary of Snaketech (San Jose). He was previously with Stanford University, where he researched substrate-noise coupling. The company also named Francois Clement as its chief architect in the U.S.

Monterey Design Systems, Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has promoted Jacques Benkoski to president from executive vice president of sales and marketing. Lawrence Pileggi , former acting chief technical officer, will take on full-time responsibility as CTO. Benkoski was previously the director of Synopsys's European Strategic Group, and general manager for Southern Europe and vice president of European operations and strategic development advisor for Epic Design Technology. Prior to Synopsys, he held various research and management positions at IBM, IMEC, and STmicroelectronics. Pileggi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, has been a consultant for Monterey since May 1997.

Henry Potts will be vice president and general manager of the Board Design Solutions Division of Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.). Potts is based at Mentor's headquarters in San Jose. He has more than 25 years of experience managing engineering and manufacturing functions. Most recently, he served as vice president of engineering for Hitachi Microsystems, where he oversaw all microprocessor and embedded chip development.

Genedax (Portland, Ore.) announced the appointment of John Ott to the newly created position of vice president of sales and outbound marketing. He brings more than 15 years of experience in the EDA industry to his new position including, most recently, director of marketing and worldwide sales at Model Technology. Prior to Model Technology, Ott also held positions at Intel, Mentor Graphics, and Synopsys.

Quantum Effect Design, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) named Andy Keane , who has more than 13 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, vice president of marketing. Keane was most recently vice president of marketing at 3Dfx Interactive. He also served as marketing manager at MIPS Technologies and held engineering positions at Signetics (Philips Components) and Intel.

Novas Software, Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) has appointed Bill Shepard as director of sales, Eastern North America, at its new sales office in Nashua, N.H. He has over 20 years of sales experience. Most recently, he was director of Eastern U.S. sales for Test Systems Strategies, a division of Summit Design and now part of Credence Systems. Prior to that, he held several management positions at Array Analysis, including president and CEO and vice president of marketing and sales. He also held sales management positions at Integrated Measurement Systems, Racal-Redac, and Tektronix.

Money Bits

Quickturn Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) announced results for Q1 1999, including revenue of $30 million and net income of $1.1 million or $0.05 per share. In the comparable period of 1998, revenue was $23.6 million with a net loss of $1.6 million or $0.09 per share. The financial results for the year ended December 31, 1998 have been restated to reflect a change in the allocation of the purchase price of an acquisition made in 1997. The change resulted in a charge for the amortization of goodwill of $257,000 in the first quarter of 1998, or a decrease in net income of $0.01 per share.

Phoenix Technologies, Ltd. (San Jose) reported results for its fiscal Q2 that ended March 31. Revenue for the quarter was $31.56 million, compared with $31.8 million in the second quarter of the previous fiscal year. In line with analysts' expectations, net income for the quarter was $3.6 million , or $0.13 per diluted share. This figure compares with net income of $3.36 million, or $0.13 per diluted share in the prior year--restated to include the results of Award Software International, which was acquired in a pooling of interests in September 1998. For the six-month period ended March 31, revenue was $62.1 million, approximately unchanged from the comparable period of fiscal 1998. Net income was $4.49 million, or $0.16 per diluted share as compared with net income of $7.85 million or $0.29 per diluted share in the six months ended March 31, 1998. The year-to-date decline in earnings includes a restructuring charge of $1.94 million recorded in the prior quarter and the amortization of goodwill and other intangible assets acquired from the company's purchase of Sand Microelectronics in September 1998.

Corrections

In the May issue of ISD, the Focus Report on Design Libraries (p. 52) omitted some of the product offerings of Nurlogic Design, Inc. We offer a comprehensive portfolio of "Design Library" elements including digital and mixed-signal standard-cell libraries, I/Os, specialty I/Os, and memories, in addition to the analog IP. The article points out how "elusive" the analog and specialty I/Os are among the library vendors. With Nurlogic's full line of products, we are addressing the noise isolation issues from a library and analog IP perspective, thus creating a seamless integration of IP for companies that are tackling the mixed-signal designs. Nurlogic is also applying its analog capabilities in creating the specialty I/Os that are "analog in nature."

Lisa Lipscomb
Vice president of marketing
Nurlogic Design, Inc.
San Diego

Atmel Corporation was omitted from the Focus Report on ASICs and Foundries in the April 1999 ISD (p. 52). Atmel supplies ASICs with a focus toward meeting the growing demand for system-on-a-chip requirements. Our ASICs target system-level integration designs incorporating logic, microcontroller DSP, memory, analog, and application-specific functions into a single chip.

Vicki McCann
Marketing communications
manager
Atmel Corp.
Colorado Springs, Colo.

The May focus report included incorrect e-mail and web addresses for Chip Express Corp. Please write to them at moreinfo@chipx.com, and visit them at www.chipexpress.com.

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integrated system design  June 1999