LONDON — Embedded tools company CAD-UL AG (Ulm, Germany) has become the latest independent software development tool vendor to fall into the arms of a semiconductor company.
Intel has confirmed that it has bought CAD-UL for an undisclosed amount.
"The reason for the acquisition is to build an optimized toolset for the XScale processor family. Intel can focus on CAD-UL's tools," said an Intel spokesman.
In November 2000, CAD-UL said it would develop tools for XScale, the ARM-derived architecture developed by Intel, which combines a Thumb-compatible processor with signal processing extensions, although the company also develops tools for Hitachi and Motorola processors.
CAD-UL's decision to allow itself to be bought by a semiconductor company follows similar moves by Hiware, Metaware and other compiler and development tool vendors over the past two years. Intel's acquisition leaves just a handful of independent embedded tools companies left in the market.
The Intel spokesman would not comment on whether CAD-UL would continue to develop tools for Hitachi and Motorola.
In a letter to customers, Martin Hermann, managing director of CAD-UL, said all existing support and maintenance contracts would be honored and that support for the Intel architecture tools — CAD-UL has built a range of compilers and debuggers for protected-mode x86 devices — would continue.
The engineering and sales force for CAD-UL's tools operation will become Intel employees but are not expected to move to Intel's offices. A circuit board design and manufacture operation set up by CAD-UL does not form part of the deal and will be spun out into a new company, CAD-UL Electronic Services GmbH.
CAD-UL counts Nokia and Siemens among its customers and recently converted to an "AG" company so that it could issue stock options to employees in an effort to attract more engineering staff.
Chris Edwards is the editor of Electronics Times, EE Times' sister publication in the United Kingdom.
