EDA Power Moves

By Barry Pangrle
There have been some recent moves at the top of a couple of smaller but notable EDA companies.

At Calypto, Doug Aitelli, who was named the CEO in January 2011 (he succeeded Tom Sandoval who then joined the Board of Directors) was replaced by industry veteran Sanjiv Kaul, the company announced last month. When Doug took over the reins at Calypto, the company described itself as a provider of RTL power optimization and functional verification software. In August 2011, Calypto acquired Mentor Graphics’ Catapult software and much of the Catapult team. In return, Mentor confirmed it had become Calypto’s largest shareholder. This gave Calypto a tool to potentially provide better power optimization by performing tradeoffs earlier in the design process. It also gave Mentor a way to provide a more focused channel for Catapult while still retaining a piece of the investment in the technology. Sanjiv Kaul has said that, “The need for Calypto’s HLS and RTL Power optimization has never been stronger and will continue to accelerate.”

Over at Oasys Design Systems, Paul Van Besouw is now the CTO and Chairman of the Board of Directors and Scott Seaton has been named the new CEO. Oasys’RealTime Designer performs RTL Synthesis along with power, timing and placement optimization and reads both UPF and CPF.

Congratulations to Sanjiv and Scott on their new positions.

While on the topic of CEOs in the EDA industry, I would be remiss not to mention the EDA Consortium’s Annual CEO Forecast & Industry Vision event being held tonight (March 14) in San Jose. Richard Valera, Managing Director of Equity Research at Needham & Company, will be the moderator for a panel consisting of:

1. Raul Camposano, CEO of Nimbic
2. Aart de Geus, Chairman and CEO of Synopsys
3. Walden C. Rhines, Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics Corporation
4. Simon Segars, President of ARM
5. Lip-Bu Tan, President and CEO of Cadence Design Systems

These are always interesting and lively events and this year’s promises to also be a great event.

In other EDA power related news, Dennis Brophy tweeted to the world on March 6 that “#IEEE Standards Association Standards Board has approved #1801: #UPF Low Power standard. Now we wait for publication!” Assuming no unforeseen occurrences, we should see a new version of IEEE-1801™ (UPF) out before DAC this year. The new standard should help clarify concepts in the standard and make it easier for designers to use UPF.

2013 also has been called “the year of the comets” with people eagerly anticipating and having high hopes for comets C/2011 L4 (Pan-STARRS) and C/2012 S1 (ISON). Comet Pan-STARRS has now swung around the sun and is visible in the northern hemisphere shortly after sunset. Unfortunately, Pan-STARRS isn’t very bright and is best viewed in clear skies with a good pair of binoculars. In case you haven’t had a chance to see it, I’ve included a picture below. Happy viewing and here’s hoping that ISON, which is scheduled to be visible around November, will be much more spectacular.

Comet C/2011-L4 Pan-STARRS, March 13, 2013. Shot from Santa Clara, CA.