Wanted! VeriBest seeks partner for IC routing

Electronic News, March 24, 1997 by Judy Erkanat

Boulder, Colo.--Rumors of VeriBest, Inc. being on the auction block (EN, The Antenna, Sept. 2, 1996) took an opportunistic turn at last week's PCB Design Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., when VeriBest began actively seeking a business partner to take a 10 percent interest in the company, similar to Synopsys' 10 percent investment in Cooper & Chyan Technology, Inc. (CCT) (EN, May 13, 1996).

VeriBest planned to approach Avant!, Synopsys and even competitor Mentor Graphics with its business proposal. The ideal candidate should be interested in jointly developing an IC router from VeriBest's constraint-drive, shape-based printed circuit board (PCB) routing technology.

Taking its lead from Cadence Design Systems' acquisition of CCT (EN, Nov. 4, 1996), VeriBest wants to extend its core PCB technology by partnering with an electronic design automation (EDA) company in the custom IC and high-end ASIC arenas. The autorouter and advanced interactive editor of VeriBest's flagship product, PCB, are competitive with CCT products. Through its agreement with Synopsys, integrating FPGA Express into VeriBest's FPGA design flow, VeriBest also went head-to-head with Viewlogic Systems in the field programmable gate array (FPGA) EDA market.

VeriBest's yet-to-be-found technology development partner will assist it in joint funding of IC routing product development; provide product development guidance from its IC design expertise; and contribute additional revenue through an alternative distribution channel.

VeriBest admitted it would not have the financial resources necessary to independently develop an IC routing product until mid-1998, by which time it felt Cadence/CCT would have dominated the market.

For its part, VeriBest said it brings to the table access to its leading-edge IC routing technology; exclusive distribution rights and investment protection; and the opportunity to take an equity position in VeriBest.

Intergraph owns 75 percent of the company, which is valued at about $200 million, with 23 million shares of stock outstanding. The rest of the company is employee-owned via a stock option program.

The broad-line EDA Windows NT supplier wants a chunk of what it believes is a lucrative IC routing market and worked with Silicon Valley's largest ASIC vendor, speculated to be LSI Logic, on initial technology application experiments.

VeriBest said the IC routing technology sees market potential in block level assembly of large ASICs and custom ICs for system-on-silicon; final assembly at the chip level; and, a new opportunity, to deliver an IC router for developers of coreware and intellectual property (IP).

The company plans to introduce a product in 4Q97 if it can conclude an agreement with a business partner in 2Q97. It plans to supply all required manpower, or is willing to combine engineering organizations under VeriBest management.

Although yet to go public, VeriBest recently reported its first profitable quarter, 4Q96 (EN, The Antenna, Jan. 13). The company plans its IPO for late this year or early next.

VeriBest separated from Intergraph Corp., where it had been Intergraph Electronics after the acquisition of Daisy/Cadnetix.