** Nassda Corp. announced that its stockholders have voted to adopt and approve a merger agreement, pursuant to which Nassda will be merged with and into a wholly owned subsidiary of Synopsys, Inc.

Per the Press Release: "More than 85 percent of the Nassda common stock outstanding on the record date were cast in favor of adoption and approval of the merger agreement. Excluding Nassda's officers and directors, individual defendants in the intellectual property litigation brought by Synopsys and the related parties of such individual defendants, more than 99 percent of the Nassda common stock outstanding on the record date were cast in favor of adoption and approval of the merger agreement at the Nassda annual meeting."

"On December 1, 2004, Nassda and Synopsys announced the signing of the merger agreement under which Synopsys will acquire Nassda. Adoption and approval of the merger agreement by Nassda's stockholders satisfies one of the conditions to completion of the transaction. Subject to the satisfaction of the remaining closing conditions including the termination of the anti-trust review of the transaction by the Federal Trade Commission, the merger is currently expected to be completed on or about May 4, 2005."

Yesiree bobbie, that's this week ...

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** Laflin Ltd. says it has "opened its doors for business armed with the fastest GDS and photomask data viewer available on the market today. HOTSCOPE, developed by the world’s largest comprehensive printing company, Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) of Japan, and distributed by Jedat Inc. (Japan EDA Technologies Inc., JEDAT), is being marketed, sold, and supported exclusively by Laflin in the U.S. market. HOTSCOPE, already in production use at numerous memory, semiconductor and photomask manufacturers throughout Japan and Taiwan, can deliver file open times in minutes rather than hours. "

Naoya Hayashi, General Manager, Electronic Device Laboratory at DNP, is offering a testimonial: "Growing chip complexity, combined with data preparation steps such as OPC and dummy pattern insertion required for deep-submicron manufacturing processes have driven chip GDS and photomask data sizes into the 10s of gigabyte range. Conventional EDA data viewers are incapable of handling such large data sets with reasonable response time and memory usage."

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** Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced "first quarter, 2005 revenue of $293 million, an increase of 10 percent over the $266 million reported for the same period last year. On a GAAP basis, Cadence recognized net income of $1.0 million, or $0.00 per share in the first quarter of 2005, compared to a net loss of $9 million, or $(0.03) per share, in the same period last year."

"In addition to using GAAP results in evaluating Cadence's business, management believes it is useful to measure results using a non-GAAP measure of net income (loss), which excludes, as applicable, amortization of intangible assets and deferred compensation, in-process research and development charges, integration and other acquisition-related expenses, restructuring charges and equity in losses (income) from investments. Non-GAAP net income is adjusted by the amount of additional taxes or tax benefit that the company would accrue if it used non-GAAP results instead of GAAP results to calculate the company's tax liability."

"Using this non-GAAP measure, net income in the first quarter 2005 was $45 million, or $0.15 per share on a fully diluted basis as compared to $28 million, or $0.09 per share on a fully diluted basis, in the same period last year."

Mike Fister, President and CEO at Cadence, is quoted: "Once again this quarter, we executed to plan. Cadence performed well because of the strength of our technology, the diversity of our products and our relentless focus on what makes our customers successful."

** IMEC announced "its self-generated revenues have risen with more than 12% in 2004, comprising some 125 million euro. Taking into account the grant from the Government of Flanders, the total budget is now 159 million euro, the highest in 20 years of IMEC history."

Per the Press Release: "The inauguration of a new research infrastructure in 2004 was a clear sign that IMEC will remain at the forefront during the era of nanoelectronics. IMEC's 125 million euro self-generated revenues stand for 78.3% of the total budget of 159 million euro. The remaining 21.7% or 34 million euro is an annual grant from the Government of Flanders. Since its foundation, IMEC was able to sustain an annual increase in revenues. The revenues from contract research were generated through collaboration with local industry (24.14%) as well as with international industry (62.23%), through projects of the European Commission (11.53%), the European Space Agency ESA (3.08%) and the local Government (0.01%)."

** Mentor Graphics Corp. announced "first quarter revenues of $164.3 million, approximately flat with the year ago quarter. GAAP earnings per share were a loss of $.06, while pro forma earnings per share were $.01, consistent with the company's pre-announcement of April 4, 2005. The Scalable Verification product line was also down, driven largely by a tough compare with the year ago quarter when the company's largest ever ModelSim order occurred."

Walden Rhines, CEO and Chairman of Mentor Graphics, is quoted: "Weakness in the business was driven primarily by softness in demand from semiconductor companies, while demand from system businesses was better. As a result, Mentor systems products like FPGA synthesis, embedded software and selected PCB products performed well. On the other hand, Calibre product line bookings were particularly weak in the quarter. We expect strength in this product line in the second half of the year based upon the number of current customer engagements."

Gregory Hinckley, President of Mentor Graphics, is also quoted: "As the drive to time-based licensing continues, our business is increasingly driven into the fourth quarter. While we are not satisfied with our first quarter performance, our second half continues to look solid"

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M2000 has named Ali Erdengiz to be Vice President of Business Development. Erdengiz will be based in the company's Sunnyvale office. He comes to M2000 from Altera, where he was Senior Director of HardCopy business operations. Prior to that, he was with Fujitsu Microelectronics America. Erdengiz began his career in chip development with Thomson-CSF France (currently ST Microelectronics), before moving to Fairchild Semiconductor and National Semiconductor where he worked in both the U.S. and Europe. He has a BSEE from ESME, Sudria in Paris, an MSEE from Universite Paris XI, and an MBA from San Jose State University.

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** DesignAdvance Systems, Inc. announced that the company has joined the Cadence Connections program. Readers are reminded that "the program promotes open interoperability between Cadence technologies and other companies' design tools."

Randy Eager, CEO and co-founder of DesignAdvance, is quoted: "We are pleased to work with Cadence to champion and support open industry standards. Our goal is to provide PCB designers using the Allegro PCB Editor with a seamless interface to our CircuitSpace software to aid them with component placement."

** Sequence Design announced it is now a member in the ARM Connected Community.

Piyush Sancheti, Sequence Vice President of Product Management, is quoted in the Press Release: "ARM, with its focus on low power processor architectures and physical IP, is a key partner for Sequence. Our focus is to enable power-aware SoC design from system level to signoff. This partnership with ARM will expedite advanced modeling of ARM processor cores and physical IP to enable SoC designers to meet their power targets with higher predictability and lesser risk in their design flow."

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** Giga Scale Integration Corp. has announced that more than 1000+ designers have registered at ChipEstimate.com for free copies of InCyte since the site was launched in February.

Adam Traidman, President of Giga Scale, is ecstatic: "The results of the ChipEstimate.com launch certainly eclipsed our best expectations. Not only does this prove that designers need a standard IC estimation tool, but they also are taking advantage of ChipEstimate.com's InCyte upgrade subscriptions which enable estimation as well as technical and economic tradeoffs utilizing data from specific IP vendors and foundries."