One of the newest members to the ESD Alliance and SEMI community is D2S, a supplier of GPU-accelerated solutions for semiconductor manufacturing. I’m particularly pleased to welcome D2S since the ESD Alliance’s goal this year is to better connect design and manufacturing, something D2S can help us accomplish.
Aki Fujimura is a founder and CEO of D2S and a well-known and long-time member of the electronic design automation industry going all the way back to Tangent Systems in 1984. Tangent was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1989 and that’s where Aki and I start our conversation.
Bob: It’s been 31 years since Cadence acquired Tangent, a company you were a co-founder of along with Steve Teig, Terry Smith, Mark Flomenhoft, and Randy Smith, who died unexpectedly earlier this year. What impact did Tangent have on the industry and on you personally?
Aki: Yeah, I miss Randy. Steve Teig and I got to work with a team of talented and dedicated engineers at Tangent to bring to market the first commercial place and route (P&R) software using “over the cell” routing designed to handle multi-layered process technology for ASICs and SOCs.
