SNPS & OneSpin: Saving for Rainy Day not always Best

As of August 17th, when they posted financial results for Q3_2016, Synopsys is reporting somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion in cash and cash equivalents. As prudent as it may be to save for a rainy day, here’s something a bit more creative the company could do with a portion of that cash: Buy OneSpin.

Why? Because OneSpin offers something that Synopsys doesn’t have – a market-leading position in formal verification. OneSpin would bring that to Synopsys, along with a strong, well-established track record and proven customer engagements across European, North American and Asian markets.

In addition, consider the years-long competition between Cadence and Synopsys, both claiming [attempting] to provide a one-stop-shop solution.

Wisely, Cadence made a powerful acquisition in the formal area with the purchase of Jasper in mid-2014, a move that has helped move the company’s one-stop claim closer to reality. Now lest that Cadence point remain unanswered, Synopsys can and should respond in kind by acquiring OneSpin.

And the move would not be unprecedented. Synopsys purchased EVE in 2012 to establish a position in emulation, so clearly the company is not afraid of acquiring verification technology that either does not exist internally or is facing time-consuming challenges during internal development.

True, the jury is still out as to whether or not EVE has been effectively integrated into the Synopsys verification toolkit – whether the EVE offering is competing effectively with Palladium or Veloce – but nonetheless Synopsys did it.

And now they should do it again. It’s time for the company to make the same bold foray into formal.

They’ve got the money, OneSpin has the technology and a longer track record than Jasper did at the time Cadence acquired them, and Synopsys needs to fill out their verification suite with tools as robust as those that OneSpin would bring to the table.

These days, Synopsys may be committing a lot of resources to both their IP and software integrity business units, but surely they have to stick to their knitting enough to guarantee they stay hyper-competitive in the EDA realm as well.

Acquiring OneSpin with some of the cash Synopsys is sitting on would help assure their EDA knitting needles stay sharp … and busy.

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Tags: Cadence, EVE, Jasper, Mentor, OneSpin, Palladium, Synopsys, Veloce

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