Posts Tagged ‘Synopsys’
Thursday, October 4th, 2012
Synopsys announced today it has completed the acquisition of EVE, the French emulation company that provides platforms for SoC verification. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
I interviewed Lauro Rizatti, General Manager and Marketing VP for EVE-US, in May of this year. [You can read that interview here.] Given the vigor of the messaging out of EVE at the time, it has come as a surprise to many, but undoubtedly not all, that EVE was acquired this week.
Per today’s Press Release issued by the two companies: “Emulation is a rapidly growing solution in the spectrum of technologies used to verify today’s highly complex SoCs. Integrating EVE’s technology with Synopsys’ best-in-class platform of simulation, debug, verification IP, coverage, static verification, low power verification, FPGA prototyping and virtual prototyping solutions will give Synopsys customers access to the broadest verification offering in the industry.
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Tags: EVE, Lauro Rizatti, Luc Burgun, M&A, Manoj Gandhi, Synopsys
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Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012
It’s not often that the rumor hits the fan that Synopsys is buying EVE, it’s not often that you’re standing in a cocktail party at a tech conference in the South of France, and it’s not often that these two events happen simultaneously.
When the Synopsys/EVE rumor swept through the cocktail party in Sophia Antipolis on this first evening of the SAME Forum, not surprisingly a lot of people had opinions. This is not just a tech conference, after all, it’s a microelectronics conference with an emphasis on design; EDA is at the center of the conversation.
This is also Europe and at the moment EVE, headquartered in France, is the darling of the EDA ecosystem on the Continent. The company is doing very well, is felt to be holding its own in a series of lawsuits with Mentor Graphics, and is widely admired overall. Needless to say, the reaction over cocktails that EVE may go the way of SpringSoft and Magma was not one of jubilation. Just the opposite, in fact.
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Tags: Cote d'Azur, emulator, EVE, Intel, M&A, Magma, Mentor Graphics, SAME Forum, Sophia Antipolis, SpringSoft, Synopsys, TI
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Thursday, September 13th, 2012
Samsung Venture Investment Corp. has just put $4 million into Carbon Design Systems in conjunction with the debut of a new strategic partnership between the two companies.
Per the September 12th Press Release: “Funds from the strategic investment will be used as working capital and will support Carbon’s ongoing development of leading tools in the ESL design space, including its fast, accurate virtual prototypes. Initiatives will be undertaken to expand the reach of Carbon’s fast, accurate virtual prototypes.”
 I spoke with Bill Neifert, Carbon’s founder, CTO and VP of Business Development on the day of the announcement. He was amazingly relaxed, a clear indication that the Samsung-Carbon partnership is a logical outcome of a long-term relationship between the organizations:
“Samsung been a heavy user of our tools for quite some time, and has been looking for ways to take even more advantage of that situation – to speed up product introductions, something that everyone’s trying to do in that marketplace.
“Today’s announcement is part of a Samsung initiative to advance their SoC design methodologies. They have both the resources and expertise today to innovate and are looking to us to help them with that. This is also a nice partnership for us, of course. It will help us share our methodology in a broader fashion.”
I asked if Samsung’s investment will jettison Carbon into an even better market position.
Bill said, “Yes, but this is a true partnership. It’s not just about money for Carbon, but about having additional access to Samsung’s time, expertise, and technology. Samsung wants to make better products, and enhancing our technology will also expand their customer base.”
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Tags: ARM, Bill Neifert, Cadence, Carbon Design Systems, Carbon IP Exchange, Denali, Mentor, Synopsys, Virtual Prototyping
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Thursday, August 9th, 2012
Ali Iranmanesh is a busy man. He continues to head up the Silicon Valley Institute of Technology, the school he founded in 1997, and continues to lead ISQED, the conference he founded in 1999. Now he is also leading ASQED, the Asia-based spin-off of ISQED Iranmanesh founded in Malaysia.
 I caught up with Ali in early August by phone. He was in Silicon Valley and had just returned from ASQED 2012 in Penang, Malaysia.
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WWJD: What prompted you to start ASQED?
Ali Iranmanesh: It was a natural extension of ISQED, which I started 14 years ago. I decided to keep ISQED in Silicon Valley, and to create other conferences for different regions.
WWJD: Remind me how many ASQED’s have taken place.
Ali Iranmanesh: This is our fourth year, with the conference alternating between Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia. Our next event is scheduled for August 26th to 28th in Penang.
WWJD: Malaysia seems an unusual destination for a conference on design.
Ali Iranmanesh: Historically, there has been a lot of manufacturing in Malaysia, but not so much design. I’ve been working with the several government entities there, helping them to move up the value chain through training, and was able to implement the conference as part of that process. Now for the past few years, there has been design going on in Malaysia – the conference has done a great job helping with that.
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Tags: Ali Iranmanesh, ASQED, Chi-Foon Chan, ISQED, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Mentor Graphics, Pamg Pandelela Rinong, Penang, Quality Electronic Design, San Jose State University, Santa Clara University, Silicon Valley Institute of Technology, SVTI, Synopsys, U.C. Extension, U.C. Santa Cruz
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Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
When it comes to wow factor, nothing outpaces the August 3rd announcement that Synopsys is going to acquire Taiwan-based SpringSoft. The announcement is astonishing for three reason:
1) Synopsys just announced the acquisition of Ciranova last week. True, the details of that deal were not released and Ciranova is not a ‘large’ company – still, two acquisitions by Synopsys in as many weeks is noteworthy.
2) SpringSoft is a publicly-traded company and therefore the details of the acquisition must be announced: Synopsys will be paying about $300 million for SpringSoft (net of cash acquired), which is a helluva lot of money …
3) … given that Synopsys has already executed another high-profile, high-priced acquisition of a publicly traded company earlier this year, buying Magma Design Automation for about $523 million (net of cash acquired).
Wow!
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Tags: Cadence, Chi-Foon Chan, Ciranova, Fortelink, GlobalSpeak, Magma Design Automation, Mentor Graphics, Nanovata, Novaflow, Novas Software, Silicon Canvas, SpringSoft, SpringSoft KK, Synopsys, Taiwan
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Wednesday, August 1st, 2012
When Eric Filseth took over as CEO at Ciranova in September 2007, he was already a seasoned EDA veteran having clocked in an accumulated 17 years at Cadence at that point. Now here in 2012, Ciranova has just been acquired by Synopsys and it would seem Filseth’s organization has fulfilled the vision he articulated 5 long years ago.
Per Filseth in 2007: “The problems in analog are very hard. In the digital world, everything is very, very automated, but in the analog world it just isn’t that way. It’s still mostly done by hand and the concept of IP as you consider it in digital – take the RTL and port it to this design or that process – is not there. In analog, it’s still a manual thing for PLLs, and amplifiers, and so on.
“There’s been so much focus on digital SoCs, and things like place and route, there’s been a lot less time spent on analog. Now digital design works fantastically well. You can get a junior engineer with only a couple years’ experience designing thousands of gates a day.
“Just think about it. Over the last 20 years, we’ve had 4 or 5 generations of digital architectures developed but in analog, people are still doing things the way they did it 15 or 20 years ago. Clearly there‘s an opportunity here, and Ciranova is well positioned to take advantage of that opportunity.”
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Tags: Cadence, Ciranova, EDA M&A, Eric Filseth, IPL Alliance, OpenAccess, Paul Lo, SpringSoft, STMicro, Synopsys, TSMC
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Thursday, July 26th, 2012
We’re coming up on almost four years, full on, since the momentous events of 15 October 2008 when the entire top executive team at Cadence exited stage left.
At the time, of course, the world was paying a shade less attention to EDA, and a shade more attention to a global crisis unfolding minute-by-minute featuring household concepts such as bankruptcy, subprime mortgages, and derivatives, and household names such as Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual, JPMorgan, Wachovia, CitiGroup, and the FDIC, to name a few.
Meanwhile, the folks who held CDNS in mid-October 2008 were holding shares that had lost almost 80% of their value over the previous 12 months, plummeting from $20+/share to around $4/share in that time frame.
The world may have been consumed by news of the larger global meltdown in October 2008, but various CDNS shareholders were sufficiently focused on the disaster at Cadence to precipitate upwards of a dozen class-action suits against the company in protest.
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Tags: Cadence, CDNS, Denali, EDA, EDA360, Lip-bu Tan, Magma, MENT, Mentor Graphics, SNPS, Synopsys
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Thursday, July 19th, 2012
This week, Accellera Systems Initiative is announcing a new version of its SystemC library, Version 2.3 to be exact. There hasn’t been a new version since way back in 2005 with Version 2.1 (albeit 2.2, a bug-fix release, was published in 2006), so this is the culmination of a lot of hard work.
I spoke by phone with Accellera Systems Initiative Language Working Group Chair David Black, Senior Member of Technical Staff at Doulos, on July 17th.
Black explained, “The purpose of Version 2.3 is to reflect the latest version of IEEE Standard 1666 – to fundamentally demonstrate new features introduced into the SystemC standard, which includes TLM 2.0, previously an OSCI-only standard and now part of the IEEE standard. Interested parties can download the SystemC 2.3 library from the Accellera Systems Initiative website. This download includes several bug fixes, the latest TLM 2.0 and new SystemC features”
I asked Black who has participated in this work, and how often they meet. He said, “The Language Working Group of Accellera Systems Initiative includes all of the major EDA vendors – Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys, and Forte – and service providers such as Doulos and Circuit Sutra – and various members of the industry such as Intel, TI and STMicro, with everyone contributing a perspective.
“I am the Co-Chair of the SystemC Language Working Group along with Andy Goodrich [Forte Design Systems] and took over my position from Mike Meredith [also with Forte]. Key contributors also include Tor Jeremiassen [TI], John Aynsley and Alan Fitch [Doulos], Bishnupriya Bhattacharya [Cadence], Jerome Cornet [STMicroelectronics], Dr. Torsten Maehne [UPMC], Pat Sheridan and Bart Vanthournout [Synopsys], and Philipp Hartmann [OFFIS], along with many others.
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Tags: Accellera, Accellera Systems Initiative, Alan Fitch, Andy Goodrich, Bart Vanthournout, Bishnupriya Bhattacharya, Cadence, David Black, Doulos, Dr. Torsten Maehne, Forte, Jerome Cornet, John Aynsley, Mentor, Mike Meredith, OFFIS, OSCI, Pat Sheridan, Philipp Hartmannm, STMicro, Synopsys, SystemC Library 2.3, Tor Jeremiassen, UPMC
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2012
To get to MathWorks’ corporate headquarters outside Boston, take the Red Line to the Orange Line to Back Bay Station. Take the Commuter Rail to Natick, cross the bridge over the tracks, walk north along leafy Walnut Street for a mile and a quarter, turn left onto Route 9, and cross the grass to Apple Hill Drive. Turn left into the parking lot of the company’s campus, pick your way through the construction going on there, and look for the main reception building across from the big parking structure.
 If you do all of this, and it’s 90+ degrees with 60% humidity, you’ll be totally drenched by the time you walk into the cool of the MathWorks headquarters. But no worries; the very nice person at the reception desk will send you down the hall to the closest break room where you can get a tall drink from the beverage dispenser and bring it back to the reception area to rest, recuperate, and prepare for your meeting with Ken Karnofsky.
Okay, two points of interest here: a) MathWorks is different. It’s headquartered in a residential neighborhood, not a commercial park; and b) the welcome is relaxed and not the high-pressure stuff of Silicon Valley.
Two additional points of interest: c) MathWorks is expanding. They’ve got 2400 employees currently, with an additional 200 job openings! Their Natick campus may offer a calm retreat from a humid Massachusetts afternoon, but it’s not a calm retreat from the world because when you’re there, MathWorks feels to be at the center of the world.
And d) MathWorks is definitely an EDA company, even though they don’t belong to EDAC and they don’t exhibit at DAC (although they have exhibited in the past). If you design chips, MathWorks’ MATLAB and Simulink is the gateway into your design. When it comes to EDA, MathWorks is most definitely the elephant in the room.
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Tags: Cadence, Cleve Moler, EEsof, Forte, HL Systems, Jack Horgan, Jack Little, John Stickley, Ken Karnofsky, MathWorks, MATLAB, Mentor, Natick, Simulink, Synopsys, Wade Stone
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Thursday, July 12th, 2012
It may be summertime, but the folks in the Verification world are clearly not taking any holidays.
This week, four different verification-related news announcements arrived, presenting an interesting set of positive mid-year perspectives: Breker’s new round of funding, EVE and Synopsys’ co-emulation success, Cadence’s beefed-up PCIe VIP, and a new co-simulation interface from Aldec and Agilent. Good news on all fronts and now these folks should take a vacation!
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Tags: Agilent, Aldec, Astor Capital Group, Breker Verification Systems, Cadence, EVE, NVIDIA, Ricoh, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Wipro
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