• Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI; Mountain View) reported that the North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a second straight month of record orders in December 1999 and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.18. A book-to-bill of 1.18 means $118 in orders were received for each $100 worth of products shipped. The three-month average of worldwide shipments in December 1999 was $1.56 billion. The figure is one percent above the November 1999 level, and is 69 percent above the December 1998 shipments level of $921 million. The three-month average of bookings in December 1999 was $1.83 billion. The bookings figure is eight percent above November 1999 and 108 percent above the $883 million posted in December 1998. While December bookings increased only slightly over the previous month, they were an impressive twelve percent above the previous cycle peak of $1.63 billion booked in November 1997 and nine percent above the previous record high of $1.69 billion posted in February 1996.
• Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) broke ground on its newest facility in San Diego. The 62,000 square foot complex, spanning the three acres adjacent to the company's existing corporate headquarters at 6290 Sequence Drive, will provide 220 offices primarily for AMCC's engineering staff. The facility is scheduled for completion on September 1, 2000. As part of the groundbreaking festivities, AMCC was presented with a proclamation from the City of San Diego and Mayor Susan Golding's office in honor of the company's achievements. On hand for the event were several local and civic dignitaries, along with AMCC executives and representatives from the design and development team.
• ASIC Alliance (Burlington, MA) corporation acquired CAD-Worx consulting, Inc., (Milpitas, CA). Founded by Jayant Nagda, CADWorx provides consulting services to design groups developing ASICs and FPGAs. The acquisition terms were not disclosed. CADWorx founder Jayant Nagda will become a regional vice president of ASIC Alliance and will be chartered with establishing ASIC Alliance's EDA design tool practice and advancing its strategic C/C++ based design and verification methodologies.
• OEA International, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) completed the contract and delivery of high-accuracy design tools for deep-submicron designs to each Sematech member. The delivered OEA Chip Parasitic Extraction and Signal Integrity Verification (CPE&SIV) tools are designed to enhance Sematech member companies' ability to design VLSIs with geometries down to 130 nanometers. The OEA tools are designed to be compatible with the Chip Hierarchical Design System (CHDS technical data) tool standard being promoted by Sematech and its member companies. OEA, working with Sematech, has created five major products: NET-AN a 3-D critical net parasitic extractor, P-GRID, a 3-D power distribution network analyzer, P-PLAN and RING Designer for power distribution network floorplanning and design rule analysis, and TECH-AN, an IC process statistical analyzer.
• Numerical Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, CA) has acquired Transcription Enterprises, Ltd. Transcription supplies Computer Aided Transcription System (CATS), an environment that prepares IC design data for semiconductor manufacturing. Transcription will become Transcription Enterprises, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Numeritech, and will continue to support existing products and partnerships. Kevin MacLean, currently vice president of transcription, will become vice president and general manager of the subsidiary. Roger Sturgeon, founder and president of Transcription, will join the Numeritech Board of Directors.
• The Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI SIG; Portland, OR) steering committee elected Roger Tipley of Compaq Computer Corp. to chair the organization as it enters the next century. Tipley has been involved in the PCI SIG since its inception in 1992 and is Compaq's representative to the steering committee that also includes 3Com, Adaptec, AMD, Gateway, IBM, Intel, Phoenix Technologies, and Texas Instruments. In addition to the newly elected steering committee chair, the marketing workgroup also elected steering committee member Kip Meacham of 3Com to chair and lead the marketing efforts associated with the SIG's new technologies and organizational activities. Meacham was a leader in the movement to bring Mini PCI to the industry and will continue to evangelize PCI in his new role. The PCI hot-plug workgroup, which will be chaired by Alan Goodrum of Compaq, is being re-activated by the steering committee in response to industry requests to develop a standard programming model for PCI hot-plug controllers. The current version of the PCI hot-plug specification V1.0, a supplement to the PCI Local Bus Specification, allows a great deal of latitude in the design of hot-plug controllers, which has enabled a variety of implementations. However, recent requests from SIG member companies have called for the development of a single standard programming model for a hot-plug controller, which will be the primary goal of the workgroup. The workgroup also expects to update the PCI hot-plug specification to include recent advances in other specifications, such as PCI power management and PCI-X.
• Aptix Corporation (San Jose) and Summit Design (Beaverton, OR) have signed an OEM agreement. With this agreement, Aptix will be providing Summit's Virsim graphical waveform analysis environment as an option within its reconfigurable prototyping systems for system-on-a-chip (SOC) emulation. Virsim will permit users of Aptix's System Explorer and SOC Explorer products to quickly evaluate ý from the register transfer level (RTL) view of their designs ýinformation captured during co-emulation and in-circuit debugging modes.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC; Hsin-chu, Taiwan) and TSMC-Acer Manufacturing Corporation (TASMC) have signed an agreement to merge TASMC with and into TSMC. The consolidation date of the merger is targeted on June 30, 2000. The merger agreement was approved this morning by the boards of directors of both TSMC and TASMC. The contemplated merger shall be implemented by way of "absorption", and TSMC shall be the surviving company after the merger. In June of 1999, TSMC acquired 30% of the shares of Acer Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. (ASMI) from the Acer Group, later renaming the facility TASMC. The Acer Group continues to be the largest and most significant shareholder in TASMC. Since June, TSMC has effectively taken over management of the manufacturing facility.
• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Tokyo) and ARM (Cambridge, UK) announced that Mitsubishi has licensed the synthesizable ARM7TDMI-S microprocessor core from ARM for use in future generations of digital consumer applications. Mitsubishi will have system devices based on the ARM7TDMI-S core available in 2001. Mitsubishi plans to strengthen its system LSI business by combining industry leading intellectual properties (IP), like the ARM architecture, with its high-capacity embedded memory (eRAM) technology to provide developers with ASIC system solutions.
• NEC Corporation (NEC; Tokyo) has developed the CB-12 family, based on its UX4 0.13-ým CMOS process (effective gate length of 0.10-ým), the first 0.13-ým cell-based IC. CB-12 will enable complete systems to be embedded in a single chip, providing up to 32 million gates and clock speeds of over 450MHz and will utilize NEC's UX4 process technology with its modular process capability along with four individual libraries. In designing a system LSI for use in cellular phones using these optimized libraries and the UX4 process, for example, the logic circuits would be based on NEC's "L" library for low-power consumption and clock speeds of up to 100MHz, while the DSP core would utilize NEC's standard "M" library enabling optimal power management.
• UMC, IBM, and Infineon Technologies announced a plan to jointly develop processes for 0.13- and 0.10-ým transistor technologies. This technology will address both logic and mixed signal process modules with copper interconnect. The majority of the process development work will occur in IBM's East Fishkill facility. UMC expects to have the 0.13-ým process available in Q2 of 2000 with the 0.1 process available in 2002. This process roll-out accelerates the push to the ultra-fine line technologies and is ahead of the SIA technology roadmap schedule for introduction to manufacturing.

Movers and Shakers

• Quantum Effect Devices, Inc. (QED; Santa Clara, CA), appointed Les Crudele to its board of directors. Crudele will help oversee QED's management operations and play a key role in all aspects of the company's corporate strategy. He will work closely with senior management in corporate planning and forecasting. Crudele joins Bruce Graham and Chris Schaepe as outside directors on the company's board. He brings more than 20 years of high-level management experience in the computing industry. Most recently, Crudele served as vice president and general manager, Workstation Division, Enterprise Computing Group at Compaq Computer Corp.
• Monterey Design Systems (Sunnyvale, CA) announced that Aidan Cullen has joined the company as chief financial officer and Dinesh R. Bettadapur has joined as vice president of corporate strategy and development. As chief financial officer, Cullen will be responsible for Monterey's finance and administration, strategic investments, and investor relations. In addition, he will focus on building infrastructure within the company. As vice president of corporate strategy and development, Bettadapur will focus on key strategies and business models aimed at growing Monterey's business in target markets. He will also focus on strategic alliances with EDA vendors and ASIC vendors in order to provide and complete RTL to GSDII flow capabilities.
• Frequency Technology, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) named Vic Kulkarni to the newly-created position of senior vice president of marketing and strategic business development. Kulkarni joins Frequency from Avanti, where he served as general manager of the silicon business unit. He will lead strategic product, technology, and business development programs for Frequency.
• Phil Moorby, the creator of the Verilog Hardware Description Language and the Verilog-XL logic simulator, has joined Co-Design Automation Inc. (San Jose) as chief scientist. In his new role, Moorby is responsible for reviewing and refining the Superlog language towards standardization, and for defining future product architectures. Moorby was a co-founder of Gateway Design Automation and the first Fellow at Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
• Artisan Components Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) appointed Eduard Weichselbaumer to the newly created position of vice president of strategic programs. Weichselbaumer's objective is to expand Artisan's library business with semiconductor manufacturers and system companies. He will report to Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Artisan Components. Artisan also announced that Larry Fagg, vice president of worldwide sales, has left the company to pursue other interests.
• PADS Software, Inc. (Marlborough, MA) appointed Ken Tepper to president and CEO, effective immediately. Tepper has served as PADS' vice president of R&D for the past five years and succeeds Richard Finigan, who will serve as vice chairman of the board. Replacing Tepper as vice president of R&D is Robert Dean, formerly vice president of R&D for the company's Advanced CAM Technologies (ACT) division and an industry veteran. PADS' senior management team will remain intact with all vice presidents reporting to Tepper.
• Avanti Corp. (Fremont, CA) appointed Kenneth Tai to its board of directors. Mr. Tai has been the chairman of the board of directors of Inve-Star Capital, Inc., a venture capital management firm based in Taiwan and Silicon Valley. Mr. Tai is chairman of the board of directors of DigiTimes Publication, Inc., a technology newspaper in Taiwan. He is also a director of Altigen Communications, Inc. and of more than 10 private companies in the semiconductor, software, and telecommunication fields in the United States and in Taiwan.

Money Bits

• Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose), released its fourth-quarter revenues of $268 million and break-even earnings per share. Total revenue for 1999 was $1.1 billion, and diluted earnings per share were $0.31. In the fourth quarter, Cadence booked 38 percent of its software products under the subscription model, exceeding its goal of 30 percent. For comparative purposes, except where noted, the results reflect earnings before unusual items and amortization of acquired intangibles. Product revenue for the fourth quarter of 1999 totaled $120 million. Services revenue was $74 million. Services gross margins were 35 percent. During the fourth quarter, Cadence recorded an unusual item of $13 million related to the write-off of goodwill from a previous acquisition. Including the effects of this unusual item and amortization of acquired intangibles, the company reported a diluted loss per share of $0.09.
• Novas Software, Inc. (San Jose) described that in fourth quarter 1999, bookings exceeded $2 million and more than 35 companies in North America purchased the company's knowledge-based debugging system, Debussy. Business in 1999 increased over 250% compared to 1998. Quarterly growth averaged 28% throughout the year.