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In the News
- Numerical Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, CA) announced it has completed its acquisition of Cadabra Design Automation, Inc. Cadabra is a provider of automated layout cell-creation technology used to create the building blocks for standard cell, semi-custom, and custom integrated circuits (ICs). Faysal Sohail, former president and CEO of Cadabra, joins Numerical's management team as senior vice president of worldwide technology licensing and sales. In this role, Sohail will oversee technology licensing, product sales, and field applications engineering. Dr. Martin Lefebvre, founder of Cadabra and its former chairman and CTO, joins Numerical's office of the CTO and will be responsible for directing the integration of Numerical's technology with Cadabra's products. Spurred by sales of communications solutions for data networking, broadband, wireless, and optoelectronics, the global semiconductor industry will exceed $200 billion for the first time in 2000 and grow to $319 billion in the next three years, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA; San Jose, CA) reported. Releasing its annual semiconductor forecast, the SIA projected that global semiconductor sales would increase 37 percent this year to $205 billion, and grow 22 percent next year to $249 billion. While the Americas will remain the world's largest market, Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market, according to the organization.
Barcelona Design, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA), a supplier of analog synthesis tools and services, working with Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, CA), integrated the Barcelona analog synthesis tools with the Cadence analog design environment. Aimed at circuit designers who use Cadence's analog design flow and need an interface to Barcelona's analog circuit design methodology, the integration is the result of several months of cooperation between the two companies. With Barcelona's methodology, the designer selects the manufacturing process and circuit topology, and then completes data sheet-like forms with specifications and performance criteria. The Barcelona technology creates simulation set-up files for functionality and performance verification with Cadence's Spectre Circuit Simulator, as well as netlist, schematic, and placement files for use in the Cadence custom physical solution incorporating Virtuoso Schematic Composer and Virtuoso Custom Designer.
Simplex Solutions, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) donated a "company-best" $36,880, the equivalent of about 88,550 pounds of food, to Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. Simplex presented the donations, raised as part of the five-year-old company's fourth-annual drive benefiting the non-profit food bank, to Second Harvest at its headquarters on November 16, 2000 as part of a daylong community-giving event.
IBM (East Fishkill, NY), Infineon (Munich, Germany), and UMC (Taiwan) started building chips with what the companies call the most advanced 0.13-micron foundry process technology currently available. The announcement comes ten months after the three companies first announced joint development of the 0.13-micron foundry technology. Dozens of customers are currently designing chips based on the process, the companies said, and a variety of logic and mixed-signal chips are in initial production at IBM facilities in the U.S., Infineon production lines in Europe, and UMC manufacturing lines in Taiwan.
Synopsys, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) announced that Cray, Inc. (Seattle, WA ) has successfully taped out an eight million-gate, 450 MHz, vector processor ASIC using Synopsys' Physical Compiler. The design was implemented using a copper-based 0.12-micron process technology. The chip, code named Processor Vector Cache (PVC), is being used in the new Cray SV1e scalable-vector supercomputer, which was announced at the IEEE Supercomputing 2000 conference in Dallas, Texas. Cray incorporated Physical Compiler into its ASIC flow as a CAD tool enhancement to achieve SV1e project objectives.
Magma Design Automation (Cupertino, CA) reported that 3Dlabs, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA ) has completed the physical design of its most complex graphics processor to date - using Magma's Blast Fusion physical design system. The chip, code-named Emma, has been signed off by 3Dlabs and is entering full-scale manufacturing. This high-speed, deep-submicron design contains over eight million gates, or about 30 million transistors. 3Dlabs designs advanced graphics processors for use in its professional graphics accelerators and embedded markets requiring advanced visual processing.
Movers and Shakers
- Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, OR) named Walden C. Rhines, formerly president and CEO, chairman of the board and CEO of the company. Additionally, Gregory K. Hinckley, formerly COO and CFO has been named president and COO and elected to the board. The former chairman, Dr. Fontaine Richardson, will remain a member of Mentor's board.
- Accellera (Los Gatos, CA), the EDA organization formed from the unification of Open Verilog International (OVI) and VHDL International (VI), has elected officers. Dennis Brophy, director of strategic business development at Model Technology, a Mentor Graphics company, was elected Accellera's chairman. Steve Schulz, director, EDA technology strategic marketing and applications, Texas Instruments was elected vice-chairman. Frank Weiler, VP, Engineering, Moscape, a Magma Company, was elected treasurer. Karen Bartleson, director, interoperability, Synopsys was elected secretary.
- Nurlogic Design, Inc. (San Diego, CA ) elected Robert R. Nunn as chairman of the board. With more than 14 years of leadership in the semiconductor industry, Nunn will be responsible for providing Nurlogic with strategic and operational guidance to enhance the company's focus and direction. Nunn brings with him marketing and general management experience in the components industry with a strong knowledge of high-speed telecommunications and networking markets. During his tenure at Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., Nunn was a key player in the company's development, from its start-up phase to its current industry position.
Money Bits
- Magma Design Automation, Inc. (Cupertino, CA ) completed its merger with Moscape, Inc. and raised an additional $28 million in financing. To date, Magma and Moscape have collectively raised over $91 million.
- Neolinear, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA), a provider of analog/mixed signal synthesis tools, received $8 million in a third round of financing.
- Cadence Design Systems participated with existing investors CEO Venture Fund, Intersouth Partners, and TVM Techno Venture Management. Investment terms weren't disclosed. The new equity will be used to expand Neolinear's research, development, and marketing.
- Xilinx, Inc. (San Jose, CA) announced that its board of directors has authorized a stock repurchase program whereby up to $250,000,000 of its common stock will be purchased in the open market. Xilinx management will determine the timing and amount of shares to be purchased based on an ongoing evaluation of market and business conditions.
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