The Week In Review: Design

M&A
Silvaco finalized its acquisition of SoC Solutions. The Georgia-based company was founded in 2000. Its team and portfolio of pre-configured IP subsystems and IoT/M2M IP will join Silvaco’s IP group. Terms were not disclosed.

Siemens PLM will acquire TASS International, a provider of simulation software, engineering and test services aimed primarily at the automotive industry. Based in Helmond, Netherlands, TASS’ focus has been on autonomous driving, integrated safety, ADAS, and tire modeling. TASS’ simulation software will be integrated with Mentor’s products and Siemens’ existing simulation portfolio. Terms were not disclosed.

IP
S3 Semiconductors will shift from providing design services and analog/mixed-signal IP to focus on industrial and communications OEMs, converting electronic systems and boards into mixed-signal integrated circuits and delivering packaged and tested chips. The company emphasized cost savings of custom chips.

Faraday launched a turnkey FPGA to ASIC conversion service, citing success in previous FPGA conversion projects as well as development of control engine IP used to customize a FPGA design or multiple chips/components into a single ASIC or SoC, while maintaining original design fidelity.

Certifications
Synopsys’ Bluetooth Low Energy Link Layer and PHY IP on 40nm and 55nm processes have achieved Bluetooth 5 qualification and been declared compliant by the Bluetooth SIG. The IP has been tested in third-party interoperability workshops to ensure that it operates reliably in real-world environments, the company said.

Mentor’s high-level synthesis platform and a host of advanced analog/mixed-signal (AMS) IC verification products have been added to the company’s functional safety program, which provides ISO 26262-certified documentation.

Rambus‘ HBM2 PHY and Northwest Logic’s HBM2 Memory Controller Core have been validated as interoperable. The controller cores are optimized for use in both ASICs and FPGAs, and support full-rate, half-rate and quarter-rate operations. The combined HBM2 solution is targeted at high-performance networking and server applications in the data center and communications markets.

Deals
Kilopass’ high capacity OTP NVM was designed into a tire pressure sensor (TPS) SoC to provide program code storage. The TPS was manufactured on the TSMC 55LP process and is expected to ship in high volume soon.

MediaTek joined Si2’s OpenAccess Coalition. The OpenAccess Database is an open reference database for IC design, with a supporting standard API, aimed at creating interoperability between EDA companies and semiconductor designers and manufacturers.