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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - EDA users worldwide will feel the impact of two mergers that restructured the industry last week.
Synopsys Inc., here, announced its intent to purchase Viewlogic Systems Inc. (Marlboro, Mass. ) in the most expensive acquisition in EDA history. And OrCAD Inc.'s (Beaverton, Ore. ) intention to buy MicroSim Corp. (Irvine, Calif.) may affect more individual users than any previous EDA merger.
The Synopsys purchase of Viewlogic promises a more integrated ASIC design flow than has existed before. In a stock swap valued around $540 million, Synopsys has acquired several key tools for ASIC design and has solidified its position as the clear No. 2 revenue leader in EDA.
OrCAD's acquisition of MicroSim's PSpice, the market's leading analog simulation tool, creates a shrink-wrap EDA powerhouse with enough critical mass to produce high-quality, easy-to-use software, and a fully integrated Windows-based tool suite for both analog and digital design (see story above).
The Viewlogic acquisition supplements Synopsys's historic dominance in ASIC synthesis with several Viewlogic tools: Chronologic VCS, which will become Synopsys's first Verilog simulator; Motive, the market-share leader in static timing analysis; Sunrise, a suite of design-for-test tools; and Eagle, a hardware/software coverification tool. But the purchase also creates overlap in FPGA synthesis, VHDL simulation and timing analysis.
New subsidiary
While ASIC design tools motivated the acquisition, Synopsys also inherits a number of system design tools, including the Windows NT-based Workview Office...