** Lots of new Business Cards **

Bill Frerichs is a Senior Research Analyst and Technology Team Leader at D.A. Davidson & Co. He writes a regular commentary called "The Tapeout" – great reading that you should be seeking out. These are Bill's comments on this week's news item from Cadence. Bill is calling 2005, "Cadence's Year."

"CEO Mike Fister has figured out where the light switches are and has moved quickly to streamline and consolidate management under three former colleagues from Intel. EDA at this point is very much a zero sum game, and each of the three design flow vendors – Cadence, Synopsys, and Magma Design Automation have unique advantages. At this point, we see Cadence’s advantages best aligned with the needs of the market, creating a near term investment opportunity. With 90-nanometer manufacturing capacity loosening now, mainstream designers can justify taking the plunge. Indeed, if they do not, they will pay a penalty in product performance and, ultimately, unit costs. Nonetheless, Cadence, from a near-term business point of view, is a ship whose sails are already set."

With that intro, here's the news from Cadence:

"Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced the addition of three executives to its management team: Jim Miller, Ajay Malhotra and Craig Johnson. In addition, the company announced a new focus for Ping Chao."

'This is a very exciting time for Cadence,' said Mike Fister, president and CEO. 'These changes will enable Cadence to place even more emphasis on deepening its enterprise-wide relationships with customers, and ensuring that it continues to build a strong pipeline of advanced products and services.'

"The Implementation and Design & Verification divisions will be consolidated into a single organization to drive product development excellence and improve consistency across all products. The new unified product development organization will be led by Miller, senior vice president of Development, a 20-year industry veteran who has held engineering and management positions at Intel Corp., Broadcom Corp., and Silicon Spice. Malhotra, senior vice president of Product Marketing, will focus on all elements of technology and product marketing to drive the transformation from a point product to integrated kit focus, and ensure that customer requirements are at the forefront of all Cadence product offerings. Malhotra was formerly co-general manager of Enterprise Marketing and Planning in Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. Johnson, vice president of Business Development, will lead strategy and business development. Johnson was most recently director of Strategic Marketing in Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. The three new executives will report directly to Fister."

Said Fister, 'This augmented management team enables Cadence to reinforce its leadership position in EDA and the global semiconductor industry.'

"Chao, executive vice president and former general manager of the Design & Verification Division, will now assume the role of senior advisor to the executive chairman and executive team. Chao will focus on opportunities around emerging technologies."

"Cadence also announced that Lavi Lev, member of the executive team and general manager of the Implementation Division, will leave the company at the end of this year to pursue other interests. 'We thank Lavi for his leadership and his contributions to the strong technology portfolio that Cadence enjoys today and we wish him well in this next phase of his career,' said Fister. Lev will continue to work closely with the executive team to ensure a seamless transition. "

Jasper Design Automation announced the appointment of Craig Cochran as its Vice President of Marketing. Prior to joining Jasper, Cochran was the Director of Marketing for Synopsys’ Galaxy Design Platform, and earlier, managed Synopsys’ Corporate Marketing group, where he directed public relations and outbound communications. He also spent 9 years in product marketing, "having launched Synopsys’ formal verification and FPGA synthesis products, and managed the flagship logic synthesis product line." Prior to his marketing career, Cochran was an applications engineer, a circuit designer and software engineer. He has a BSEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Jasper Design Automation also has named Nafees Qureshy as its new Vice President of Engineering. Nafees has 15+ years of experience in EDA tools development. Prior to joining Jasper, he was Senior Director of Engineering at CoWare. Before joining CoWare, Nafees ran his own software consulting company, and prior to that, spent 10 years at IKOS Systems as a Developer, Engineering Manager, Staff Scientist and later Director of Engineering, developing mixed level verification tools. Before IKOS, he worked at Schlumberger Technologies, developing test generation tools. Nafees received a B.Tech. in EE from the IIT, Bombay, and an MS in CS from Arizona State University.

Tharas Systems, Inc. has named Richard Curtin as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. Curtin has 20+ years of marketing, sales and business management experience in the electronics and EDA industry. Prior to Tharas, he was COO at @HDL, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Xpedion Design Systems, and CEO at Simpod. Curtin also served at Frontline Design and Viewlogic Systems. He started out his career as an ASIC design manager. Curtin has BS in Computer Engineering from Boston University, an MSEE from Cornell University, an MBA from Pepperdine University, and is a co-holder of two US patents in the areas of signal processing and arithmetic computation. Lucky Tharas!

VaST Systems Technology announced that Linda Prowse Fosler has joined the company as vice president of marketing and business development. Previously, Prowse Fosler was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Esterel Technologies. Prior to that, Prowse Fosler was a senior executive at IKOS Systems, and then General Manager of the Verification Solutions and New Technologies Group for the Mentor Emulation Division after IKOS was acquired by Mentor. Before IKOS, Prowse Fosler was Vice President of Software Quality at Cadence, and held various positions in software engineering at Tandem Corp. and Hewlett Packard.

** Changes at EDAC **

Denali Software, Inc. announced that Co-founder and CEO Sanjay Srivastava has been named to the nine-member EDAC Board of Directors. Srivastava will be filling the 2004-2006 board seat vacated by Bernie Aronson, the current president and CEO of Kilopass, who was previously CEO of Synplicity. You're reminded that EDAC represents 100+ companies in the EDA industry, and that its Board of Directors is made up of CEOs from member EDA companies who have been elected by the membership to represent them. Current directors are elected to serve two-year terms.

EMA Design Automation announced that the company has accepted an award from the Rochester Business Alliance ranking them #1 in the Rochester Top 100. The company says "this makes EMA the fastest growing privately held company in all of Rochester, New York."

Manny Marcano, President and CEO of EMA, is quoted: "I attribute our success to our business model. We believe that our employees are our most important assets, our customers must succeed for us to succeed, and our suppliers should consider us as part of their company."

Per the Press Release: "This is the 18th year of the Rochester Top 100 honoring privately held companies based on three years of revenue growth – this year, from 2001 through 2003. Companies must have at least $1 million in revenue for each of these years, and the rankings take into account both dollar and percentage growth. The Rochester Business Alliance and the local office of KPMG, a worldwide accounting firm, sponsor the Top 100 program. KPMG collects nominations, verifies the information, and calculates the rankings. This year, 189 companies were nominated."

Open Core Protocol International Partnership announced the launch of a Japanese version of its website. The new version of the website allows Japanese visitors to access the organization's information and materials in their native language, eliminating translation barriers. OCP-IP OCP-IP says that "Governing Steering Committee member Toshiba helped with creation of materials for the new website."

Ian Mackintosh, President OCP-IP, is quoted: "This is another example of OCP-IP providing the tools and infrastructure demanded by our rapidly broadened base of members. Native language accessibility drives the globalization of the OCP standard so that both members and visitors can do their jobs efficiently and effectively."