AMI opens U.S. and Japan ASIC design centers

Electronic News, June 8, 1992

POCATELLO, IDA. -- Responding to customers' time-to-market needs, American Microsystems Inc. last week opened its first two ASIC design centers -- in San Jose, Calif., and Tokyo--in a planned worldwide network.

Located in what AMI termed "the world's two largest technology hubs," the new centers will offer, among other services, predesign consulting and support with regard to standard cell vs. gate array implementations, gate count, package selection, pin count and power considerations. Other services include design assistance for AMI's digital ASIC product line, design verification, registration, and conversions from field programmable gate array to ASIC via the company's Netrans software.

These services had previously been offered only through AMI's corporate ASIC design personnel in Pocatello. The company said there would be no additional cost for the localized service.

AMI expects to open a third design center in Orange County (Laguna Hills), Calif., shortly, and a fourth--"probably in Europe"--by the end of the year, according to Harold Blomquist, sales vice president. Additional centers are planned for New England, Atlanta and the upper Midwest next year.

Each center will be outfitted with several Sun Sparcstations, ViewLogic software, IKOS hardware accelerators, the company's own Design Analyzer and Pattern Analyzer software. The ASICs will be manufactured in and shipped from Pocatello.

Mr. Blomquist recalled that AMI set up "Taj Mahal" design centers in San Jose and New York in the early 1980s, but closed them by early 1989. "AMI has a lot of the bruises and scars, as do our competitors, from the profligate waste that occurred in the '80s when everyone thought it was absolutely critical to have a myriad of different places around the country where customers could come and push a mouse around."

Those centers, according to Mr. Blomquist, "gathered dust," and "when it became sufficiently painful, we got rid of them."

What is different this time around is that "today's ASIC customer has become so sophisticated. It's not like seven or eight years ago when the customer didn't have design tools in-house."

He stressed "The establishment of remote resources (from Pocatello) will not increase what the customer has to pay AMI" with regard to its schedule of non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs.