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In the News
- Innoveda, Inc. (Marlboro, MA) entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Pads Software, Inc., a privately held company. In the transaction, valued at approximately U.S. $32 million, a total of approximately 6.5 million shares of Innoveda stock and approximately U.S. $2 million will be exchanged for all Pads outstanding stock. In addition, Innoveda will assume all outstanding options to purchase Pads stock. The announcement comes two months after Viewlogic Systems, Inc. and Summit Design, Inc. completed their merger to become Innoveda. Through the merger, Innoveda plans to offer a complete printed circuit board and advanced packaging design environment that includes tools for interconnect planning, component placement, layout and automatic routing; high-speed analysis; and board fabrication auditing and optimization tools.
- A record number of participants and an expanded technical program were among the many highlights of the 37th Design Automation Conference (DAC), according to organizers. Nearly 4,700 designers and engineers attended more than 50 technical sessions, panels, and workshops, and more than 150 papers were presented during the show at the Los Angeles Convention Center, June 5-9, which had an overall attendance estimated at more than 17,000, organizers said. Many of the DAC program audio and visual presentations will be available at www.dac.com.
- PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Burnaby, BC, Canada) acquired privately held fabless semiconductor company Malleable Technologies (San Jose). PMC-Sierra will exchange approximately 1,250,000 shares for the 85 percent of the company it doesn't already own. The Malleable team of 40 employees will join PMC-Sierra's Silicon Valley office. The transaction, subject to completion, will be accounted for as a purchase and is expected to close in the third quarter.
- Protel International Limited (Sydney, Australia) has completed the purchase of Metamor, Inc. (Portland, OR). The acquisition of Metamor took the form of a stock purchase agreement to acquire 100 percent of the shares of the company. Protel intends to quickly integrate and enhance the Metamor technology to make advanced FPGA synthesis accessible for electronic designers. In 1999, Protel acquired Accolade Design Automation and the Green Mountain VHDL simulator. Protel has over 150 employees worldwide.
- Blackstone Technology Group (Worcester, MA) announced that it is working with Sun Microsystems (Palo Alto, CA) to provide compute farm solutions. Through this relationship, Blackstone becomes a partner for service and support of the Sun Technical Compute Farm (Sun TCF), the pre-configured rack-mounted compute farm introduced by Sun. Blackstone and Sun anticipate increased demand for products and services supporting compute farms for compute power-intensive enterprises. Blackstone's Computefarm Advantage suite includes up-front needs analysis, hardware/software implementation, training and support, maintenance, and ongoing strategic planning. Blackstone will provide its services to Sun's compute farm customers. The company has worked with Sun through the Sun TCF beta rollout, providing end-to-end compute farm capacity for various high-tech companies.
- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) announced that it is joining the Open SystemC Initiative. The SystemC group, founded in 1999, has a goal of developing a language and reference implementation based on C++ class libraries, called SystemC, to form a freely available and interoperable platform for system-level design and intellectual property (IP) modeling. The company said it believes that a concerted industry-wide effort to develop a system-language that is eventually adopted by the IEEE will help both EDA vendors and users of that language.
- Transim Technology (Portland, OR) and Simec GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) have signed an OEM agreement to integrate Simec's multi domain system simulator, Simplorer, as a simulation engine for Transim's Internet-based simulation service, Websim. The agreement expands the types of components and circuits capable of being simulated with Websim to include high power MOS, BJT, IGBT devices as well as motors, servos, and other mixed-technology systems. According to terms of the agreement, Transim will be able to provide its customers access to the simulation and modeling capabilities of Simplorer and in return will promote and link customers to Simec. Simplorer is a simulation tool that includes a hardware description language for analog, mixed-signal, and mixed-technology systems that supports the design of power electronics, electrical drives, and mechatronic systems.
- Altera Corp. (San Jose) completed a minority investment in C Level Design, Inc. (San Jose), a system-level design automation (SLDA) company. Concurrently with this investment, Tim Southgate, Altera vice president of software engineering, will take a seat on C Level Design's technical advisory board to provide insight into the design tool flow for system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) designs.
- Chronology Corp. (Redmond, WA) has joined the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) and will expand its testbench automation solution, QuickBench Verification Suite, to support a SystemC-based design flow. Quick-Bench Verification Suite is a structured, transaction-based solution providing a unified verification flow for block- and chip-level design. Users can download the SystemC modeling platform, which includes the SystemC specification, source code, and reference manual, at www.systemc.org.
- Magma Design Automation, Inc. (Cupertino, CA) announced that NEC IC Microcomputer Systems, Ltd. has entered into a multi-year agreement to purchase Magma's Blast Fusion EDA software. The multi-license agreement will allow NEC IC Microcomputer Systems will use Blast Fusion physical design system's timing and signal integrity optimization in the development of their next-generation microprocessor cores. The deal follows a benchmark of an existing very high-speed microprocessor core design.
- Market for devices with IEEE 1394 interface hits inflection point. The IEEE 1394 market has hit its inflection point, with growth of over 300% in 1999 compared to 1998, according to Cahners In-Stat Group. The high-tech market research firm predicts that dramatic growth will continue as the interface penetrates more SKU's in the computing and digital camcorder markets, and as it is adopted by more device categories in both the computer and the consumer electronics industry. However, the emergence of IEEE 1394 devices is not without pitfalls. As a key convergence technology, the rollout of IEEE 1394 into PCs and consumer electronics devices impacts industries ranging from PC and consumer electronics manufacturing, to TV, cable, and satellite broadcasting, to film and music production, to retail. While the breadth of applications for IEEE 1394 ultimately points to an enormous opportunity, the market continues to be characterized by enormous ambiguity and conflict. On the PC side, unit volume is accelerating, and most market barriers have been cleared, however, interface alternatives, including USB 2.0, and a lack of applications beyond digital video editing pose continuing threats to the ultimate market potential. Despite this, Mark Kirstein, In-Stat's VP of Research believes "that as more peripherals become available, and the installed base of PCs with 1394 grows, applications will continue to expand." On the other hand, the consumer electronics (CE) market faces a more direct barrier, copy protection of copyrighted video. As IEEE 1394 will ultimately carry digital video between digital TVs, set top boxes, and even PCs, Hollywood studios insist that their valuable content is protected from illegal duplication. Nevertheless, In-Stat reports that total shipments for devices with IEEE 1394 ports grew to over 12 million units in 1999, from 3.5 million units in 1998. The primary growth driver was IEEE 1394 adoption into consumer and notebook PCs in 1999. PC manufacturers who now support IEEE 1394 include Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Fujitsu, HP, NEC, Panasonic, Sharp and Sony.
- Prolific Inc., announced today that Quantum Effect Devices, Inc. (QED) (NASDAQ: QEDI), has purchased Prolific's ProGenesis tool suite. QED will use Prolific's fully automated approach to custom tailor high performance standard cell libraries for their high volume microprocessor designs. QED designs and manufactures 32-bit and 64-bit MIPS RISC processors for embedded computing. QED will use ProGenesis to quickly custom tailor libraries to ensure timing closure and dramatically reduce time-to-market. "After looking at the library creation tools market, we chose Prolific due to their total automation approach," said Joe Lichy, principal engineer of QED. "With ProGenesis, we created a high performance library drawn to our detailed specifications in much less time than it would have taken using traditional custom layout. In addition, we can now modify our architecture or design rules and re-spin the library very quickly."
Movers and Shakers
- Teradyne, Inc. (Boston, MA) announced the retirement of the company's chairman of the board of directors and founder, Alex d'Arbeloff. Teradyne's president and CEO, George Chamillard was elected to replace d'Arbeloff as chairman, effective June 1, 2000. Mr. d'Arbeloff will continue as chairman of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chairman of the management board of Teradyne's Software Test Group, and as an advisor to Sparkventures, a venture capital partnership.
- ASIC Alliance Corp. (Woburn, MA) appointed Gary Arena to the position of chief financial officer. Arena has 16 years of leadership experience in a broad range of dynamic and entrepreneurial, growth-oriented service organizations. He will report directly to Ray Carlin, president and chief executive officer of ASIC Alliance. Most recently, Arena was the chief financial officer and chief operating officer for Nextera Interactive, part of the international consulting firm Nextera Enterprises, Inc. of Lexington, MA, where he was responsible for overall financial management of the business as well as the infrastructure support functions, including accounting and finance, office and facility administration, human resource management, recruiting and scheduling, and internal information systems. Previously, he was director of finance and operations at Nextera Enterprises, Inc. and a part of the senior management team that took Nextera public in May of 1999. Prior to Nextera Enterprises, Arena held financial positions at Mercer Management Consulting, Inc., Critical Care America, Inc., Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. and Arthur Young and Company.
- Integrated Silicon Systems (San Jose) appointed Jordan Selburn as the company's new director of product marketing. The former principal analyst for semiconductor IP and ASIC programs at Gartner's Dataquest joins Integrated Silicon Systems' worldwide sales and marketing operations in San Jose. In this newly created position, Selburn will managae the company's application-specific virtual component (ASVC) product marketing activities worldwide, and the company's product management and technical marketing teams. Before joining Dataquest, Selburn was the marketing manager for ASIC products at LSI Logic, with responsibility for the portfolio of core products. While there, he was the product manager for a number of ASIC products, ranging from 0.6 ým to 0.25 ým, including both high-performance and consumer technologies. He has also held technology management and applications positions at Cadence Design Systems, as well as microwave design and applications positions with HP/EEsof, Harris, and Watkins-Johnson.
Money Bits
- Full-service semiconductor manufacturing provider Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (Kulim, Malaysia) received final approval from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (U.S. Ex-Im) for a loan of $674 million. A signing ceremony was held at the U.S. Ex-Im Bank in Washington, D.C., which officially validated the loan. The ceremony began with opening remarks from Ex-Im Bank vice chair, Jackie Clegg. Also in attendance, Dato' Ghazzali Sheikh Abdul Khalid, the Malaysian ambassador to the U.S. Silterra's factory will be operational in 1Q 2001, ramping to 30,000 eight-inch wafers per month by 2002. Silterra will have immediate access to LSI Logic's capacity on the license technologies to qualify and develop customers.
- Mosaid Technologies, Inc. (Ottawa, Canada) reported revenues of $48,109,000 for its fiscal year ended April 28, 2000, representing an increase of 111 percent from fiscal 1999 revenues of $22,776,000. Net earnings for the year were $1,904,000 compared to a net loss of $10,175,000 for the previous year. Net earnings per share on a fully diluted basis were $0.26 for fiscal year 2000 compared to a net loss of $1.42 for fiscal 1999. Revenues for the fourth fiscal quarter ended April 28, 2000 totaled $14,244,000 compared to $7,443,000 for the fourth quarter ended April 30, 1999, an increase of 91 percent. Net earnings for the quarter were $450,000 compared to a net loss of $3,302,000 for the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year. Net earnings per share for the quarter on a fully diluted basis were $0.06 compared to a net loss of $0.46 per share for the corresponding quarter last year. During the fourth quarter, the company's short form final prospectus was cleared by the Ontario Securities Commission, thereby permitting the exercise of special warrants, issued on December 16, 1999 into common shares on a one for one basis. The proceeds from this financing have strengthened the company's balance sheet such that at year-end, its cash and short-term marketable securities totaled $31,147,000. These funds are to support the company's R&D and general corporate requirements, as well as to support growth through business development initiatives.
- Samsung, Texas Instruments and Xilinx. 1999 worldwide DRAM revenues increased 47.8% from 1998, reversing a three year downward trend according to Cahners In-Stat Group. The high-tech market research firm reports that during this increase, Samsung maintained its first place DRAM vendor ranking and increased market share slightly to 22.9%. Hyundai took second place, nearly doubling its market share to 20.3%, partly as a result of its acquisition of LG Semicon, which had placed 5th in the rankings in 1998. Micron Technology rounded out the top three with a 16.0% share and 167% revenue growth. Other firms in the top ten included (in order) NEC, Infineon, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, and Mosel-Vitelic. In-Stat has also found that worldwide DSP revenue is also on the rise, with DSPs continuing their climb upward, with annual revenues of almost $4.4 Billion in 1999, an increase of 25.4 % over 1998. There appeared to be no surprises in 1999 as DSP business continued to be polarized, with the top four companies divvying up 95% of the worldwide DSP revenue: Texas Instruments, Lucent, Motorola and Analog Devices. Other companies, focusing mainly on DSP cores are scrambling to grab a thicker slice of the market and DSP offerings at different levels are evolving rapidly as companies like Mysticom, DSP Group, Infineon, LSI Logic and others introduce their intellectual property in Systems-On-Chip (SOC). As in recent years, DSP market shares in 1999 continued to remain fairly unchanged largely due to the relationships that have been forged with major OEM companies. For the first time, Xilinx captured the number one ranking for the user programmable logic (UPL) market in 1999, finishing the year 3.4 percentage points ahead of Altera. This gain of market share can be largely explained by the differential in growth rates of the CPLD and FPGA markets, at levels of 31.8% and 33.6%, respectively. Due to their specific areas of expertise, Xilinx maintained its dominance in FPGAs, while Altera remained the leader in CPLDs. With few exceptions, only Xilinx and Altera gained market share in 1999, while all other participants lost ground. A notable exception is QuickLogic, which saw a nominal rise in market share. The remaining rankings for 1999 saw a number of changes and the acquisition of Vantis by Lattice Semiconductor has solidly placed Lattice in the number three spot with a user programmable market share of 15.9%.
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Copyright © 2000
Integrated System Design
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