Merging design services with an IC library

Electronic News, Feb 23, 1998 by Ann Steffora

San Jose, Calif.--Designs moving into deep submicron geometries are changing the requirements of IC libraries. Particularly in light of research that indicates the need for libraries to increase to as many as five or eight per fab process at or below the 0.25 micron level. This also means the libraries must be portable across fab processes.

Duet Corp., the parent company of Duet Technologies, Inc., believes a good strategy to address these design issues is to combine its expertise in design services with a leading IC library company, which is why it will announce this week its acquisition of Cascade Design Automation, based in Bellevue, Wash., a subsidiary of Oki Electric of Japan.

Interestingly, the purchase of Cascade Design Automation (then the tool division of Seattle Silicon) by Oki in 1991 caused quite a stir in the industry (EN, July 8, 1991). Controversy developed when it became known that a Japanese firm was interested in buying the tool division. Hearings were held before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. when it was found that the federal government would not block the sale based on national security grounds.

Duet Technologies' market focus has been on the infrastructure aspect of design services more than design implementation, which companies such as Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys provide. Duet specializes in services around macrocells and I/O, along with integration of tools, libraries and design flows.

Cascade provides the Silicon-Intelligent family of IC libraries and compilers; the MasterPort Rapid Library Development tool; and the Epoch physical design and analysis tools. According to industry analysts, the two companies are a good match and have complementary technologies. Cascade competes with companies such as Artisan Components, Aspec Technology and Avant! Corp. in the library and physical design space, with Avant! coming on strong after a host of acquisitions that provide the company with libraries as well as key physical design tools.

Cascade's core competency is creating process portable libraries and Duet believes the interest in the industry is strong. The new company is poised to assist customers in managing in-house resources, says Prahbu Goel, founder and chairman of Duet. Since resource requirements are significant and hard to come by, IC companies are increasingly turning to outsourced library creation in order to focus on design.

"No fab likes to keep tuning its process for better densities and yields," explains Mr. Goel.

The newly combined engineering workforce, situated in Seattle, San Jose and India, will total about 400, with the total number of employees numbering about 500. Company headquarters will be in San Jose, where Duet is currently based. Naresh Nigam, current president and CEO of Duet Technologies, will retain his title and position following the completion of the acquisition, which may be final as soon as the end of this month.

This is a good fit for both companies, says Rita Glover, president and principal analyst at EDA Today, a Phoenix-based electronic design automation (EDA) market research firm. Since Cascade was basically the research arm of Oki, it didn't have strong support for marketing, Ms. Glover explains. The acquisition benefits Cascade because it will now be part of a stable, profitable company that is aggressively focused and has the resources to bring underutilized technology to products and then to market, she says. Duet benefits from Cascade's strong tools that fit well into its strategy, Ms. Glover continues.

Both companies are privately held, therefore financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed. A Duet executive did remark that an initial public offering may be forthcoming this year. Gary Smith, chief analyst of worldwide EDA at Dataquest, a market research firm in San Jose, notes that this acquisition puts Duet in a very attractive position in the market to be acquired by a larger fish in the EDA or electronics industry.