The five tools — part of the company's Singlepass SOC strategy — are aimed at ultra deep submicron (UDSM) processes, 0.10µm and below. The cornerstone of the strategy is Astro, an IC placement and routing suite. Two main components of the system, according to Avanti's head of U.S. R&D Michael Jackson, are Physisys and Milkyway-DUO (dynamic unified optimization).

Physisys (for Physically Accurate Signal Integrity and Synthesis Optimization) embeds optimization technology with physical design to concurrently address the layout, power, clock, timing, and signal integrity concerns that appear in UDSM designs. According to Jackson, Astro provides up to 20 percent better timing, 3 to 5X faster runtime, and 2X greater capacity than previous products. Astro's architecture supports Apollo, Saturn, and Mars products for place and route, synthesis optimization, and signal integrity analysis. The company said Astro will be available in the second quarter of 2001on Sun Solaris and HP U/X operating systems.

Jackson stated that the Singlepass SOC tools were designed to respond to the SOC roadmap and address problems such as increased interconnect delay, crosstalk, and electro-migration disintegration.

Hsu noted that the company drives to reinvent products every three to five years to keep pace with advances in technology, and maintain what he calls 27 quarters of straight-line growth. "I kill my own baby every three to five years," Hsu said — a phrase that has been out and about in the technology sector since first widely attributed to Scott McNeally of Sun Microsystems. "[In order to succeed} as a vendor, you must do a better evolutionary job."

Other products included in the launch include Venus, a physical and mask verification system, and Columbia, a chip-assembly tool. Clearly, Avanti is moving to market a suite of offerings that hopes to eventually cover the entire design flow and thereby give recent players such as Monterey and Magma a healthy dollop of competition.

Hsu also commented on the problems, as he sees them, in EDA. First, he believes that price slashing has a negative impact on the industry. In addition, he said EDA companies play financial games, maintain low R&D investment, have inefficient management, and that the U.S./Silicon Valley is still the epicenter of EDA, a perception which hampers the industry.

To increase revenue into the future, Hsu said that Avanti would continue to diversify its offerings, including a push to expand and enhance its design services. In the long term, Hsu said he aims to lay the foundation for the company to reach $2.1 billion in revenue by the end of the 21st Century. He's got almost a hundred years in which to do so.