Sequence Design Inc. and Virtual IP Group Align

Electronic News, Oct 16, 2000 by Gale Morrison

SEQUENCE DESIGN INC., SANTA CLARA, CALIF., has formed a strategic alliance with Virtual IP Group to deliver design services for customers designing ICs with features sizes below 0.18-micron. Virtual IP Group, which provides intellectual property (IP) as well as services, will deploy Sequence's interconnect-driven design-closure products, known as Columbus and Copernicus, in its design methodology. The deal also will include other Sequence products involved in timing optimization, power analysis and optimization and 3D interconnect-modeling tools.

Sequence will leverage Virtual IP's design centers and consulting resources to help test future Sequence tools and methodologies on advanced communications, multimedia and other system-on-a-chip designs. Vic Kulkarni, chief operating officer of Sequence, said this alliance represents a departure from the traditional perpetual license EDA business model. Under the terms of the alliance, Sequence will earn revenues on a per-tapeout basis, as Virtual IP Group delivers completed chip designs to its own end-customers.

Kulkarni said that the agreement does two things. "First, it expands our market to include customers we might not otherwise reach and without any issues of competing with our own EDA customers," Kulkarni said. "And second, it gives Sequence a recurring revenue model tied directly to the value we deliver."

Joseph Hong, Virtual IP Group COO, said that this is a win-win alliance between a design-services and an EDA company and it is a good model for the industry. "We can better deploy state-of-the art EDA technology as it's developed, at business terms that relate to end-value derived yet we're not locked into a single-source for design tools," Hong said.