Layout optimization startup Tela buys Blaze DFM

Rumored to be defunct
Speculation that Blaze DFM may have shut its doors started in December in a posting on EDA tool users' site Deepchip.com. In the following days, EE Times tried to reach Blaze representatives. Email and phone messages went unreturned.

But last month Blaze CEO Jacob Jacobsson told EE Times that the company was working through the details of a merger but declined to divulge the acquiring company's name or provide further details.

Blaze and Aprio Technologies, which merged into Blaze in February 2007, were considered to be among the most promising of a flock of "popup" DFM companies that emerged in the middle of the decade. Most of these DFM-focused companies have either been acquired or faded away.

Tela said key Blaze DFM engineering personnel would join Tela as the result of the acquisition. But most of Blaze's management team, including Jacobsson and Clive Wu, the founder of Aprio, will not join Tela, the company said. The only member of the Blaze management team that will make the transition is Rajiv Bhateja, vice president of operations at Blaze, who will join Tela as vice president of power optimization products, according to Carney.

The acquisition also brings to Tela Blaze's complete line of products and technologies, including Blaze MO power-optimization technology. Blaze claims its patented technology reduces leakage power by as much as 50 percent in the logic portion of chip designs targeting sub-100-nm process technologies. Blaze MO uses a patented technique involving gate length biasing to optimize leakage power consumption while maintaining the original area footprint and performance of the design, which has proven effective in production designs by several major fabless and IDM companies, according to the company.

Tela said it would also work with TSMC to enahnce the PowerTrim service, which is geared toward reducing leakage power significantly while keeping customer's original design size and speed intact. Since its launch last year, an unspecified number of TSMC customers have already leveraged the incremental benefits of PowerTrim in production silicon, Tela said.