ARM Buys Carbon


ARM acquired Carbon Design Systems and its staff for an undisclosed amount of money, adding virtual prototyping capabilities for ARM cores. The deal is the latest in an onslaught of mergers and acquisitions that have racked the semiconductor industry over the past 18 months, propelled by low interest rates and relatively low valuations of target companies. For ARM, this deal solves a growing... » read more

Industry Scorecard For 2014


At the end of last year, Semiconductor Engineering asked the industry about the developments they expected to see in 2014. If you care to refresh your memory, they were categorized under markets, semiconductors and development tools. Now it is time to look back and see how accurate those predictions were and where they fell short. Part one addressed the market and semiconductor areas and in thi... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Mentor Graphics acquired Nimbic, which makes simulation software for power and signal integrity and electromagnetic interference. No purchase price was given. Synopsys’ Coverity subsidiary acquired Kalistick, which makes cloud-based software solutions to boost test efficiency. Terms of the deal were not provided. Tools and IP Sonics introduced a new development environment for... » read more

Power Is A Global Issue


Power is now the No. 1 target in developing chips. In a keynote speech at the recent Cadence Verification Summit, James “Jim” Hogan—an EDA investor associated with companies such as Sonics, Nimbic, Solido, AutoESL, Altos and many others, and previously part of Cadence’s Telos venture arm—made the point that power is the big problem that needs to be solved. We all know that reducing... » read more

Should EDA Heads Be In The Cloud?


Consider the following two comments about cloud computing and electronic design automation: “Over time everybody will move to the cloud in EDA at least in some extent.”—Raik Brinkmann, CEO of OneSpin Solutions. “We put a substantial effort into that, and of all the things we've done in the last 25 years this is probably the single one where the result is essentially zero. I don't ... » read more

Emulation’s Winding Path To Success


By Ed Sperling Emulation was developed for verifying complex ICs when simulation was considered too slow. After more than a decade of very slow growth, however, sales have begun to ramp. There are several reasons for this shift. First, SoCs simply are becoming more complex, and the amount of verification that needs to be done to get a chip out the door can bring simulation to a crawl. Desig... » read more