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Synopsys, Inc. announced it is joining Si2 "as a result of the company’s increased presence in analog simulation. As a member of Si2, Synopsys will advocate the migration of analog design to OpenAccess. Synopsys is also making available to Si2 its open source Liberty CCS model."

Steven Schulz, President and CEO of Si2, was delighted to be able to announce the news at the Si2 meeting at DAC 2005 in Anaheim. Steve felt that the news was one of the most important announcements coming out of DAC. In the Press Release, he's quoted as saying, "It is the mark of a healthy industry when competing suppliers and customers alike can work together to solve shared challenges that enable industry growth. Synopsys’ leadership and strong history of fostering openness is a welcome addition to Si2 and will help us to better tackle shared design flow and modeling needs."

Rich Goldman, Vice President for Strategic Market Development at Synopsys, was equally enthused about the news: "Joining Si2 at this juncture is a natural extension of Synopsys’ continued push to offer end users the best design solutions possible. Si2 has been making significant strides to serve the entire electronic design community. In recent years, Si2 has adapted systems and structures more in line with industry needs. Synopsys is now working with Si2 to determine the significant role it will play in the standards organization."

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** EDAC announced that it has appointed John Bourgoin to its Board of Directors. He will serve in that capacity through April 2006. Bourgoin is CEO and President at MIPS Technologies, and a well-known figure in the EDA and IP industries. Bourgoin has 30+ years' semiconductor experience with past roles in management and microprocessor development at MIPS and AMD, and in engineering management at Motorola Semiconductor Products Division. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Silicon Graphics and president of the MIPS Group of SGI. Prior to that, he was a senior executive in the Computation Products Group at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Walden Rhines, Chairman of the Consortium and Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics is quoted in the Press Release: "John Bourgoin's appointment to our board, as a highly respected CEO within the IP industry, is a demonstration of our commitment to making the EDA Consortium represent the entire electronic design industry. We welcome Mr. Bourgoin to the board, as someone who will help the Consortium reflect the close alignment between IP and EDA."

** Enuclia Semiconductor, Inc. has announced Richard Previte as the first member of its Advisory Board. Previte has 40+ years of semiconductor industry experience. Currently, he is Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of Spansion, a subsidiary of AMD/Fujitsu. Prior to Spansion, Previte joined AMD just after its formation and spent 30 years there in various executive positions including CFO, COO, President and member of the AMD Board of Directors. In addition to his positions at AMD, Previte held executive management and board positions with Exar, MarketFusion, and Vantis. He has a BS and MS in Business from San Jose State University.

** HARDI Electronics has appointed a North American Sales Manager, formed a US subsidiary and added three more Independent Sales Representative organizations to its growing sales team. The company has named John Hoekstra as North American Sales Manager. Hoekstra has extensive experience in ASIC design, applications and sales. He has held various positions at United Technologies, AMI and Chip Express.

Also announced – Hoekstra has added three independent sales representatives: Delta Sales will handle the Pacific Northwest; Luscombe Engineering of Colorado is responsible for Colorado and Wyoming; and Luscombe Engineering of Utah will cover the Utah, Idaho and Montana territories.

Lars-Eric Lundgren, president and CEO of HARDI, is quoted: "Increased customer awareness of the importance of hardware prototyping, coupled with HARDI’s unique, Lego-like approach for verifying designs in known hardware, is creating billowing demand for our HAPS system around the globe, and quite rapidly in the United States. John’s twenty years of related experience provides an ideal combination of in-depth technical understanding and hands-on field experience. We are fortunate to have him join our team as our North American Sales Manager."

** Sequence Design has named Robert Sheffield as Vice President of Finance and Administration. Sheffield has 30+ years of executive-level finance experience with public and private companies. He was involved in the Magma Design Automation IPO as CFO of the company in 2001, and has also been CFO of 7 other Silicon Valley companies, including Time-Warner Interactive, Faroudja, Asante Technologies, and Televideo Systems. Sheffield holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Cal State, Northridge, and an MBA from the University of Utah.

** Tera Systems, Inc. announced Motti Beck is the company's new CEO. Beck has 20+ years in the semiconductor industry, and was previously the Founder, President, and CEO of Bindkey Technologies, which was acquired by DuPont Photomask. He is also a former president and COO of Butterfly Communications, which was acquired by Texas Instruments. Prior to Butterfly, he spent 15 years at National Semiconductor in various engineering, marketing and senior management positions. Beck has a BSEE degree in computer engineering from the Technion, Haifa, Israel.

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** Clear Shape Technologies Inc. has raised $5+ million in its second round of venture financing, bringing total funding to more than $10 million. The most recent round was led by Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s strategic investment program, with participation from KT Venture Group, the investment partner of KLA-Tencor. Early in 2004 US Venture Partners led the Series A financing with participation from Telos Ventures and AsiaTech Management.

Jim Hogan, General Partner at Telos Ventures, is quoted: "In my 30+ years in the semiconductor industry, rarely have I seen a situation where there is so much angst as a result of such fundamental changes as are being currently witnessed in the design to manufacturing chain. The problems associated with lithography, copper and an inadequate rule-based design tools infrastructure are only getting worse. Clear Shape has a strong and talented technical team spanning both design and process technology. They have a highly innovative approach to closing the critical gap in information and knowledge for the semiconductor industry."

** Tharas Systems, Inc. announced that it has raised $5.5 million in new venture capital funding. The round was led by El Dorado Ventures and included current investors NeoCarta Ventures; Alliance Venture Management, LLC; Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; and Tharas board member Prabhu Goel. El Dorado Ventures Technology Partner Fred Buelow, a former Vice President of Rechnology at Hal Computers and Co-founder and Chairman of Aida Corp., is joining the Tharas board.

Rahm Shastry, President and CEO at Tharas is quoted: "We are pleased that our investors, including El Dorado Ventures, recognized the value that our patented technology brings to the marketplace – a significant price/performance competitive differentiator that shortens verification cycles, and thereby a material reduction in time-to-market for our customers."

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** The X Initiative announced that ATI Technologies Inc. and TSMC are the recipients of the Initiative's 2005 Design-to-Manufacturing Catalyst Award. The award was presented at the X Initiative's Fourth Anniversary Open Forum, held in conjunction with the DAC 2005.

Per the Press Release: "The X Initiative steering group selected ATI and TSMC for their pioneering collaboration to produce the foundry industry's first X Architecture chip. ATI, Cadence Design Systems, TSMC, and the X Initiative announced earlier this week the successful fabrication of the high-performance, high-volume PCI-Express graphics chip using the X Architecture … ATI's graphics chip was implemented using the Cadence X Architecture design solution and fabricated in TSMC's 0.11-micron process. This X Architecture implementation eliminated one metal layer from the original Manhattan design, reducing die costs."

Jan Willis, Senior Vice President of Industry Alliances at Cadence and X Initiative Steering Group Facilitator, is quoted: "ATI and TSMC's effort on this milestone chip is a prime example of how no one company can do it alone - design chain leaders must cooperate to enable significant advances in the semiconductor industry. In 2005, the year of first X products, ATI's industry-first fabless chip reiterates production readiness of the X Architecture as well as its compelling cost and performance benefits. The X Initiative is pleased to recognize the contributions of ATI and TSMC with this year's Design-to-Manufacturing Catalyst Award."

** Synopsys presented its fifth annual Tenzing Norgay EDA Interoperability Achievement Award to ARM at DAC 2005 in Anaheim.

Per the Press Release: " The award is presented annually to an EDA company that has surpassed common levels of interoperability, has contributed to overall industry advancement, and has helped provide a new view of the future for EDA interoperability. Named for the crucial role that Sherpa Tenzing Norgay played in the first successful attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, the EDA Interoperability Achievement Award recognizes achievements that are critical to a designer's success."

"[This year's] award recognizes ARM's collaborative EDA contributions, which include long-term support of the Liberty standard format; its standard proposals to the Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows (SPIRIT) Consortium; its efforts in establishing a reference verification methodology based on SystemVerilog; and its drive to establish reference methodologies (RM) for implementing ARM microprocessors, including ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM) technology, in silicon."

Neal Carney, Vice President of Marketing for Physical IP at ARM, is quoted: "The goal of our collaborations is to make ARM IP easy to use in every chip design and to support/create industry standards, to promote advanced solutions and to reduce the cost of system-on-chip design. Through our participation in supporting established and emerging standards like Liberty, SPIRIT, and SystemVerilog, and through our efforts in establishing reference methodologies including the RM extensions for IEM low-power technology, we help make available to our customers cost-effective, integrated, yet highly flexible IC design options."

Group hug!