Chinese ASIC design house acquires LSI Logic's DSP unit

To pay for the acquisition, VeriSilicon said it raised $14.8 million in Series C financing from venture capital firms Austin Ventures and Sierra Ventures. LSI Logic will also receive a certain number of VeriSilicon shares as part of the consideration for the ZSP acquisition, VeriSilicon said. The financing will also be used to support expansion of operations, sales and marketing and engineering teams, according to the company.

Under the terms of the agreement, VeriSilicon (Shanghai, China) has acquired certain assets related to ZSP licensable cores, development tools, standard products and software and associated issued and pending patents, the company said. The majority of the ZSP unit workforce has joined VeriSilicon and will continue to develop and market the ZSP Digital Signal Processing technology, VeriSilicon said.

"Through the VeriSilicon acquisition of the ZSP assets, we have assured the continued availability of this important technology to customers and the marketplace," said Jeff Richardson, executive vice president of LSI Logic's custom solutions group, in a statement. "We are also pleased that the majority of the ZSP workforce have joined VeriSilicon and will continue to play a key role in the success of the products and technology."

VeriSilicon said it would assume support of all existing contractual obligations. The company said it has also licensed a number of the ZSP cores to LSI Logic for use in existing and future products.

VeriSilicon said it plans to integrate ZSP within the existing company organization and is planning to increase the development activity to accelerate the ZSP roadmap with the introduction of new licensable cores, silicon design reference platforms and standard products.

"This strategic acquisition is positioning VeriSilicon ahead of the game in the emerging design foundry market," said Wayne Dai, chairman, president and CEO of VeriSilicon. "The combination of the ZSP IP portfolio and solutions for vertical applications with our existing full range of horizontal IPs, multi-fab libraries, design service and turnkey capabilities, is enabling a unique value proposition for our customers worldwide."

LSI Logic said in March it planned to sell off the ZSP unit. VeriSilicon licensed the ZSP400 DSP core from LSI Logic last September.