EDAC announced on September 27th that Joe Costello, Chairman and CEO of think3 and former Chairman and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, is this year's recipient of the EDA industry's Phil Kaufman Award. The Consortium will present the Award on Thursday, October 28, at its 11th annual Award dinner and ceremony in San Jose. The Phil Kaufman Award honors an individual whose contributions have had measurable impact on the creativity and productivity of design engineers.

Per the Press Release: "Joe Costello was selected to receive the Phil Kaufman Award because of his business contributions that helped grow the EDA industry. Under his leadership (1987-1997), Cadence became the world's leading supplier of EDA software and services and one of the top ten largest software suppliers in the world."

EDAC Chairman and and Chairman/CEO at Mentor Graphics, Wally Rhines is also quoted: "[Joe] displayed a savvy ability to recognize important design trends and did a great job of moving the industry forward to capitalize on those trends."

** Last Week was Lawsuit Week in EDA Land **

"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., September 17, 2004 - Synopsys Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) announced it received a patent assertion letter from Magma Design Automation, Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA) citing three patents, two of which (U.S. Patent No. 6,453,446 and No. 6,725,438) name Dr. Lukas van Ginneken, a Magma founder and former Synopsys employee, as the sole inventor. After a thorough review, Synopsys has determined it is not infringing the cited patents, and further determined Synopsys rightfully owns the two van Ginneken patents. Accordingly, Synopsys today filed suit in Federal court against Magma under the van Ginneken patents to enforce its rights as the owner of the inventions and to bar Magma from practicing Synopsys' technologies."

"SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 17, 2004 - Magma Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA) today announced that a lawsuit and accompanying public statements by Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS) alleging that Magma has violated Synopsys’ patent rights are without merit. Magma also affirmed that its intellectual property rights are protected in several patents issued to Magma by the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Magma further affirmed that it will not only vigorously defend itself in this matter but will also take the offensive and fully enforce its patent and other rights against Synopsys."

Let the Games Begin ...

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The United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Tharas Systems four patents for technology that address "hardware-assisted debug and functional verification." The awards represent a total of seven patents to date for Tharas Systems. The company says that U.S. Patent number 6,629,297 entitled, "Tracing the change of state of a signal in a functional verification system," and U.S. Patent number 6,625,786 entitled, "Run-time controller in a functional verification system," enables Tharas to embed debug infrastructure inside the hardware-assisted engine - while U.S. Patent number 6,691,287 entitled, "Functional verification system suited for verifying the function of non-cycle integrated circuits (IC) design," and U.S. Patent number 6,629,296 entitled, "Functional verification of cycle-based integrated circuit design," enables delivery of a unique, cost-effective and scalable solution for high-performance, hardware-assisted verification of complex integrated systems.

Ambric, Inc., a new fabless company, has announced successful completion of its Series A financing. The $10.4 million round was co-led by ComVentures and OVP Venture Partners, and included all of Ambric's seed-stage investors, including Northwest Technology Ventures and private investors. Ambric says is developing a new type of programmable IC platform that will help electronics companies accelerate time to market for their products while also slashing chip development costs. The company was founded by Jay Eisenlohr, president and CEO, and Anthony Mark Jones, vice president of engineering and CTO.

The Press Release says Eisenlohr has 25+ years in the semiconductor and EDA industries and that Ambric's the third start-up he has founded. His most recent company, Rendition, Inc., was sold to Micron Technology, Inc. for $125 million. Jones, who holds 48 patents, has spent 23 years in the IC industry.

[Editor's Note: The appropriately skeptical might wonder then when patent infringement news from Mr. Jones's company will be included above the dotted line in future issues of EDA Confidential.]

But no matter because, concentrating on the here and now, let's go on to report that the Press Release is quoting Eisenlohr as saying, "Ambric has ample funding to complete its initial set of products, which we will deliver in 2005 to the select group of international electronics companies we're working with. With this round of funding, Ambric will also hire additional hardware and software engineers and managerial staff. With more than 25,000 high-tech professionals in the Portland area, we can readily recruit top-level talent."

Good news, indeed, if you're living in Oregon.

Emulation and Verification Engineering (EVE) announced Amos Technologies will be its exclusive distributor to electronics companies in Israel. Under terms of the distribution agreement, Amos Technologies will market and support ZeBu, EVE's verification platform used by IP, FPGA, ASIC, SoCs, and embedded software.

Also from EVE - The company says it has named D’Gipro Design Automation and Marketing, Ltd. to be EVE's distributor in India. S. Ramachandran, D’Gipro’s Managing Director, is quoted in the Press Release: "We have been impressed by the reputation EVE has gained in Europe and USA in a short timeframe. Combining very fast execution, ease-of-use, and affordability, ZeBu will meet the growing demand for fast functional verification and embedded software development in the Indian market."

Nassda Corp. announced Dermott Lynch has been promoted to Vice President, U.S. Sales, and Susanne Hampe has been hired as the European General Manager. Both will report to Nassda CEO, Sang Wang. John Yelinek, who joined the company in January 2000, has been appointed Vice President of major accounts from his previous role as Vice President for Worldwide Sales.

Dermott Lynch has 18 years in EDA, and previously was an executive at Sente until its merger with Sequence Design. He also worked at Quad Design, Ashling Microsystems, Elcor Associates and Contec Microelectronics. Susanne Hampe was formerly European Sales Director for Barcelona Design, and also previously worked as General Manager for Central Europe for Simplex Solutions. After Cadence Design System's acquisition of Simplex, she became business development manager for Europe at Cadence.

Silicon Design Systems, Inc. announced it has established a Technical Advisory Board that will consult and advise the company’s executives and engineering management on technology directions for its physical design closure products.

Initial Board Members includes: Dr. Eby G. Friedman, Director of the High Performance VLSI/IC Design and Analysis Laboratory, and Director of the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems at the University of Rochester., Senior Fulbright Fellow, and an IEEE Fellow; Dr. Sachin Sapatnekar, the Robert and Marjorie Henle Professor of ECE at the University of Minnesota, Fellow of the IEEE, former Technical Program and General Chair for the Tau workshop and the International Symposium on Physical Design, and recipient of an NSF Career Award, three best paper awards at DAC, one at ICCAD, and the SRC Technical Excellence award; Dr. Naveed Sherwani, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Open-Silicon, previously general manager of Intel Microelectronics Services, co-architect of the Intel microprocessor design methodology and environment, and author or co-author of three books and 100+ articles on various aspects of physical design automation and ASICs; and Udi Kra, CTO of Silicon Design Systems, founder of Silicon Value - the predecessor company to Silicon Design Systems - and former member of DEC's Semiconductor Design Center design team in Israel.

Considering the qualifications of these folks closely, could one even begin to conceive of a technical problem too thorny for them to solve? No? Well ... lucky SDS!

Synplicity Inc. has promoted Jim Lovas to Vice President, North American sales, where he will oversee Synplicity’s North American sales team. Lovas will report to company President & COO Gary Meyers, effective October 1st. Lovas has 20+ years of experience in the EDA and semiconductor industries. Prior to Synplicity, Lovas was at Summit Design, and also held senior sales and AE manager positions at Zycad Corp. Lovas started out as an ASIC designer at ITT Avionics. He has a BSEE from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and an MSCS from the Steven’s Institute of Technology.

Cadence Design Systems announced on September 17th, the completion of a major renovation of the EDA laboratory at Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic, as part of the company's University Partner Program. Per the Press Release: "With the support of the Ministry of Education, the laboratory has been renovated to develop engineering talent in advanced electronic design for the Czech electronics industry. In addition to financial support for construction, the Cadence contribution provides an enriched design environment in the lab with a broad array of industry-standard software."

Andrea Vondrakova, spokesperson at the Czech Technical University, is quoted: "This facility marks an important step in the evolution of the electronic engineering courses offered by our university. Cadence is supporting the development of next-generation engineering skills not just for the Czech Republic, but for the electronics industry worldwide."

More hands across the water ... quite literally, this time.