SAN JOSE -- Cadence Design Systems Inc. announced an agreement to acquire IC design and verification software supplier Simplex Solutions Inc. for stock work about $300 million.
The surprise purchase is expected to be completed in the third quarter and is intended to strengthen Cadence's design portfolio for 0.13-micron and below IC process technologies.
"The proposed acquisition of Simplex fuels our efforts to supply our customers with the world's best technology to ensure '1st Silicon Success,'" said Ray Bingham, president and CEO of San Jose-based Cadence.
Simplex, in nearby Sunnyvale, will provide Cadence with a range of design automation technologies for 3-D parasitic extraction and full-chip power-grid planning, electromigration and signal integrity solutions, said company officials.
The planned purchase is part of a growing consolidation movement in the electronics design automation (EDA) industry. Earlier, Mentor Graphics Corp. announced a $160 million cash offer to buy Innoveda Inc., its competitor in the pc-board and cable-harness design markets (see today's story).
For the past year, Simplex has also been promoting a new concept for routing complex ICs with diagonal "X Architecture" interconnects vs. the traditional right-angled wiring grids used in chip layouts. Simplex this week announced that the X Architecture concept had passed a lithography production test at ASML Holding N.V. (see April 22 story).
"With Cadence's strong global channel and technology investment in 0.13-micron and below, together we are able to deliver the best immediate and long-term solutions for our customers' most daunting technology challenges," said Penny Herscher, chairman and CEO of Simplex.
Once the merger is completed, Herscher will become executive vice president and chief marketing officer responsible for marketing, strategy, Cadence's Tality design services subsidiary and the Simplex SoC Design Foundry. She will report to Bingham.
Aki Fujimura, Simplex president and COO, will become corporate vice president and general manager of the Design for Manufacturability business unit, reporting to Lavi Lev, executive vice president and general manager of Cadence's IC business unit. Steve Teig, the chief technology officer at Simplex, will become the Cadence chief scientist and will join the office of the CTO, reporting to Bingham.
Separately today, Cadence also announced it had completed its purchase of privately-held Plato Design Systems Inc., which supplies scalable routing technology for advanced semiconductor layouts.Terms of the purchase were not released.
When the purchase was announced last month, Cadence said the transaction would augment its system-on-chip design software, called Encounter, to address timing, signal integrity, power, run-time, and capacity issues (see March 13 story). All 26 Plato employees will join Cadence, the company said today.
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