The Week In Review: Design

M&A
Design services firm Synapse Design acquired the assets of ACEIC Design Technologies, including the engineering team and verification IP. ACEIC, which was based in Bangalore, primarily focused on verification services for wireless 802.11ac MAC IP. This is only the latest expansion move from Synapse. Earlier this year, the company acquired the services companies Tech Vulcan in San Diego, CA and Asilicon in Ranchi, India, and opened a second design center in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Tools & IP
Cadence launched a team collaboration and report generation program for PCB designs. Allegro Pulse handles work-in-progress design data in a unified web-based platform, including metric collection, issue tracking, and preferred parts and IP management. The software is TCL1 certified for ISO 26262.

Arasan launched a MIPI C-PHY HDK for prototyping C-PHY based projects using Arasan’s MIPI DSI or CSI IP Cores and software stacks. The HDK supports C-PHY v1.1 and D-PHY v1.2 with speeds of up to 2.5GHz. The board will be assembled with either a C-PHY TSMC 28nm or TSMC 12nm ASIC.

Deals
Montage Technology used Kilopass high capacity one-time programmable (OTP) non-volatile memory (NVM) for secure key storage in its next generation set-top box chips targeting emerging market environments.

Gigajot Technology licensed Rambus Binary Pixel technology and patents for use in Gigajot’s next-generation solid-state image capture sensors. According to Gigajot, the technology is sensitive enough to detect a single photon of light at room temperature and enables extremely high pixel densities.

UltraSoC and Percepio are teaming up to integrate UltraSoC’s on-chip monitoring and analytics IP with Percepio’s software tracing tools for real-time operating systems. The tools will be able to communicate and share essential information for real-time system-wide monitoring.

Ferrari used Ansys’ computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools to determine aerodynamic performance of its endurance-focused racecars. Ferrari won the Manufacturers’ and Drivers’ World Championship titles and the Team’s Trophy in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Numbers
Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $37.1 billion for October 2017, up 21.9% from October 2016 and 3.2% more than last month, giving October the industry’s largest-ever monthly sales total, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics. WSTS raised its projections for annual growth to 20.6% in 2017 and 7% in 2018, with memory contributing the highest growth followed by optoelectronics and sensors.

Events
Reuse 2017: Dec. 14 in Santa Clara, CA. In its second year, this tradeshow and conference focused on the IP community will feature keynotes on dealing with IP theft, the evolution of the IP ecosystem, and semiconductor trends from a foundry perspective, plus a panel on open source in IP.

14nm 2.5D/HBM2/SerDes Alliance for High-Performance Networking, Computing, Deep Learning and 5G Infrastructure: Dec. 11 in Tokyo, Japan and Dec. 14 in Shanghai, China. Samsung, ASE Group, eSilicon, Rambus and Northwest Logic will present a seminar featuring a complete FinFET-based supply chain that leverages advanced IP and 2.5D technology.