Synopsys, SLE to ink five-year EDA pact

Electronic News, Dec 23, 1996

Mountain View, Calif.--Synopsys last week revealed it has entered into an exclusive five-year agreement with Silicon Logic Engineering (SLE) to develop electronic design automation (EDA) services for advanced ICs. In addition, as part of the agreement both companies will jointly build a laboratory for the development, design implementation and test of complex devices fabricated in a 0.25-micron manufacturing process.

The agreement calls for all EDA services developed by SLE to be delivered exclusively to Synopsys. In return, SLE will receive access to Synopsys' technology and to the technologies developed from the Synopsys' and IBM agreement. Earlier this year, Synopsys signed a six-year agreement with IBM to develop methodology and tools for designing high-performance ICs (EN, Feb. 19).

"Customers have faced significant problems around the aspect of system-on-a-chip. So what we have been doing, in addition to doing core technology, is enhancing our services group to be able to complement these technologies to benefit customers," said Kurt Garbe, VP and GM of Synopsys Professional services in an interview with Electronic News. "This partnership adds another key aspect to this enhancement and will give us a better opportunity to create solutions and services for these system-on-a-chip problems."

According to Mr. Garbe, the agreement is inclusive so all of SLE's experience will be used by Synopsys. Also, the two companies have formed an integrated team of SLE and Synopsys people for working groups to begin solving these system-on-a-chip problems, he added.

"We are actually already working with a joint customer that is working on a joint chip well over one million and half gates," said Mr. Garbe. "This is an all encompassing development including the company's IP (intellectual property) strategy. SLE is going to be a big part of this joint customer development." However, Mr. Garbe would not give details on the nature of the customer or the system-on-a-chip that was under development.

According to Jeffrey West, principal partner of SLE, the company now has the opportunity to speak with customers it would normally not be able to deal with as a start-up.

"This level of access to Synopsys tools and technologies provides us with an enhanced ability to develop innovative solutions to problems faced by customers designing deep sub-micron devices," said Mr. West."We also expect to co-develop innovative methodologies for design-reuse for high-performance designs."

The Professional Products group customizes support for design support for ICs and systems design. According to Synopsys, the agreement allows SLE to integrate its experience with processor and controller cores into developing and designing sub-micron ICs. SLE will work with Synopsys' customers and technologies to expand the implementation, enabling technologies and hands-on-support for these EDA services, Synopsys said.