Calma
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Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets. The company's best known products, both targeted at the integrated circuit design market, were GDS (an abbreviation for "Graphic Data System"), introduced in 1971, and GDS II, introduced in 1978. By the end of the 1970s, Calma systems were installed in virtually every major semiconductor manufacturing company.
The external format of the GDS II database, known as GDS II Stream Format, became a de facto standard for the interchange of IC mask information. The use of this format persisted into the 21st century, long after the demise of the GDS II computer system. In the integrated circuit industry jargon of 2005, "GDS II" referred no longer to this nearly-forgotten computer system, but to the format itself, connoting in general a completed integrated circuit design ready for delivery to the mask vendor.
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[edit] History
Calma Company was incorporated in California on November 13, 1963. Its initial business was as a product distributor, continuing the business of a previously existing partnership of the same name. [UT78] The company took its name from its founders, Cal and Irma Hefte.
In 1965 Calma introduced the Calma Digitizer, a device consisting of a table-like surface with constrained cursor, whereby an operator could enter coordinate data from a paper drawing and have it turned into computer readable form.
In about 1969, the company undertook to develop a minicomputer-based graphics system built around a digitizer. This effort was spurred by the arrival of Josef Sukonick, a recent MIT math Ph. D. who had become aware of the market potential for such a system for integrated circuit (IC) design through his work at the CAD (computer-aided design) group of Fairchild Semiconductor in Sunnyvale, CA. The GDS software system was conceived and, in its initial implementation, almost single-handedly built by Dr. Sukonick. The first GDS system was shipped in late 1971 to Intel.
The growth of sales of GDS paralleled that of the nascent integrated circuit industry. By August 1976 there were 121 GDS systems installed at 70 companies. Of these, 43 were installed outside the U.S. [INT76]
In 1978, Calma, which never had a public stock offering, was acquired by United Telecommunications, Inc., (UTI) of Kansas City, Missouri, for $17 million in stock. Calma became part of UTI's United Computing Systems (UCS) operating unit. UTI took a hands-off approach to managing its acquisition, allowing Calma to continue largely unchanged on its growth path.
In 1978, Calma introduced GDS II (pronounced "G-D-S two"), a modernized replacement for GDS. With its 32-bit database, GDS II met the need for greater capacity and resolution in IC designs. GDS II quickly replaced GDS as the data entry system of choice for many IC design groups. As of late 1980, there were 171 installed GDS II systems. [SCH81]
In December 1980, the sale of Calma by UTI to General Electric (GE) was announced. The sale price was $110 million, with an additional $60 million contingent on Calma's profits over the next five years. The acquisition was completed in April 1981. [BW80,SJM80]
GE had grander designs for Calma than had UTI. In addition to the hope of maintaining dominance in the IC market, GE aimed for Calma to expand in the architectural, engineering, manufacturing and construction markets -- "factory of the future" was a prominent buzzword. Due partly to excessive expectations, partly to internal weaknesses already in place at the time of the acquisition, and also to the inherent difficulty of keeping up with rapidly changing technology, these ambitions went largely unrealized.
In 1989 GE sold Calma. The electronic side of the business was sold to Valid Logic Systems (which in turn was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1991). The mechanical/architectural side of the business was sold to Prime Computers of Natick MA in 1989. Prime had just completed a hostile take-over of Computervision. Prime basically merged the Calma Mechanical and AEC product lines with Computervision. The new product became CADDS 5.
[edit] Business and financial
The following data on sales, earnings, and employee count are drawn from a number of sources. Financial data 1973-1977 are from [UT78].
fiscal year net employee ending revenue($) income($) count (date) ----------- ------- ------ ------------ 8/31/71 700K [BEN73] 8/31/72 1.6M [BEN73] 30 (12/72) [BEN73] 8/31/73 3.5M 412K 74 (12/73) [BEN73] 8/31/74 6.1M 562K 92 (9/74) [PH74] 8/31/75 6.9M 398K 8/31/76 9.5M 747K 135 (11/76) [PH76] 8/31/77 14.3M 1.2M 8/31/78 289 (3/78) [UT78] 12/31/79 43M [BIS81] 597 (12/79) [BIS81] 12/31/80 62M [BIS81] 935 (12/80) [BIS81] 12/31/81 105M [SJM82] 1200 (11/81) [SFC81] 12/31/82 1400 (4/82) [SJM82]
At the time of the 1978 acquisition by UTI, the largest shareholder was Calma board chairman Ronald D. Cone. He held 321,706 of Calma's 635,266 outstanding shares. [UT78]
[edit] Legal
In February 1977, Computervision (CV) filed suit in federal court over Calma's hiring of a group of 5 employees from CV in San Diego. (This group developed Calma's DDM product.) The CV suit against Calma and the five employees alleged breach of competition, breach of non-competition agreements, and interference with contractual relations. This draining lawsuit was finally settled out of court in October 1979. In the UTI acquisition of Calma in 1978, 5% of the newly issued stock was held in escrow as a reserve pending the outcome of this litigation. [UT78]
[edit] Buildings
As early as 1970, Calma occupied (part of??) a building at 707 Kifer Road in Sunnyvale. Roughly 10,000 square feet, the building consisted of a large warehouse/manufacturing area in the rear, with an office area of about 10 offices in the front. Somewhat later, an additional building to the rear (on San Gabriel Drive) was leased as a manufacturing/shipping area, bringing total square footage to 35,000.
In February 1978, the company relocated to a 67,000 square-foot single-story building at 527 Lakeside Drive in Sunnyvale, part of the newly developed Oakmead Village industrial park.
Additional buildings were added as the employee count grew. In 1979, the R&D department moved to a building at 212 Gibraltar Drive (corner of Borregas Avenue) in the Moffett Park area of Sunnyvale. Other buildings were added in the area.
In 1980 a new manufacturing facility was opened in Milpitas, California.
In 1982 a new 109,000 square foot headquarters was opened in Santa Clara, California. [SJM82]
[edit] Products
[edit] General description (1978)
The following is quoted from [UT78]:
"Calma's computer-aided design and drafting systems (also referred to as interactive graphics systems) are comprised of component hardware modules, electronic interfaces, and software programs. Most of the systems sold are constructed by combining available components to meet the requirements of the customers' specific design or drafting application. Calma's systems enable customers to automate a wide variety of design and manufacturing processes which have previously been performed manually.
"The primary hardware components of a system are a central processing unit, operator stations and plotter outputs.
"The central processing unit consists of a minicomputer, a computer console and page printer, a magnetic tape transport and a magnetic disk memory unit. Other optional peripheral devices such as card readers and paper tape punches are also available. These components are interfaced with Calma-designed and manufactured controllers, and integrated into a single unit with system software designed and programmed by Calma.
"An operator station consists of a digitizing device, an interactive cathode ray tube (CRT) display unit, coordinate readouts and a keyboard. The main difference between stations is in the type of digitizing input station used. The Calma digitizer is a backlit 48 by 60 inch table. To digitize analog graphical data directly on computer-compatible medium, the operator of the digitizer manually traces graphical data with a moveable stylus. The graphic tablet has a smaller surface and is operated with an electromechanical graphic pen.
"The digitizing input station is linked by system software to the CRT display, which allows an almost instantaneous display of any segment of the source drawing or a graphic element from the library. The CRT display also has windowing and magnification capability.
"An alphanumeric keyboard is used for entering text, scaling information, dimensions and commands, and an optional functional keyboard is available for entering frequently used functions, symbols and macro commands.
"The output most commonly used in Calma's systems is a graphic plotter. Calma software supports both on and off-line pen and photo plotting devices.
"Calma's computer-aided design systems are used in a wide variety of applications. To date systems have been sold principally to electronics firms for use in the design of integrated circuits, printed circuit boards and electrical schematics; to governmental agencies and public utilities for use in cartographic applications; and to manufacturing companies for use in the design of mechanical parts and systems."
[edit] Calmagraphics/CGI
[edit] GDS
[edit] GDS II
For an overview of the GDS II system as of 1981, see [SCH81].
[edit] DDM
DDM (short for "Design, Drafting, Manufacturing") was a 3-dimensional wireframe computer-aided design application. In the mid-1980's, it was one of the top ten selling CAD packages on the market. As of 2006, DDM continues to be supported by Parametric Technology Corporation [1] as "Dimension III".
The General Motors Central Foundry Division (GM-CFD) had applied DDM to the design of castings and tooling for automotive components such as engine blocks, cylinder heads and steering knuckles. DDM was run on Calma's proprietary dual monitor workstation hardware connected to Data General Nova and later Digital VAX 11/780-series computers. GM-CFD had DDM installations in Saginaw, MI, Pontiac, MI, Defiance, OH, Bedford, IN, Danville, IL and Massena, NY.
[edit] People
This section gives thumbnail sketches of people who had significant roles at Calma over the years. This includes managers, key technical contributors, etc. It would be a daunting task to come up with a list of all such people. Instead, I have seeded this list with a few names, and hope that others will not shy away from adding their own or others' names as seems fit. The years after each name are years of employment at Calma.
- John Benbow 1981-
- 1981 VP of R&D, previously at Dataskil (UK)
- Robert Benders 1968-198?
- 1968 hired as chief engineer
- 1971 named CEO, remained in this position until 198?
- Enrico F. Biondi
- Lemuel D. Bishop
- 1972 VP of finance
- Arthur J. Collmeyer 1974-1981
- Ronald D. Cone
- Michael L. Courtade 1973-1978
- 1974 manager of GDS software development
- Eugene W. Emmerich
- Gerry Devere
- 1976 DDM development team
- later head of DDM R&D
- Thomas S. Hedges 1973-
- 1972 BS Caltech engineering
- 1977 member GDS II development team
- 1991 co-founder and chairman of Fractal Design Corp
- 1997-2000 chief systems architect Metacreations, Inc.
- Cal Hefte and Irma Hefte
- Calma's eponymous founders
- Cal is deceased [HOL90]
- Irma reported running flower shop with daughters [HOL90]
- Harvey C. Jones Jr. 1974-1981
- hired 1974 as application engineer in Reston, VA office
- later manned the Boston sales office.
- 1980 named VP of MED (microelectronics division) Business Development
- 1981 co-founded Daisy Systems Corp
- 1987 first CEO of Synopsys (chairman of board 1994-1998)
- co-founder of Tensilica
- William Nickels 1973-
- 1973 manager of software development
- 1975 manager of customer support
- Thomas J. Schaefer 1972-1981
- Math Ph. D. UC Berkeley 1978
- 1977 member GDS II design team
- VLSI Technology Inc 1981-1990
- Compass Design Automation 1990-1997
- Synopsys 1997-2000
- Carl Smith 1973-
- 1977 member GDS II design team
- Cadence Design Systems
- Simplex Solutions
- Roger Sturgeon
- BSEE & MSEE-CS Univ of Calif Berkeley
- 1977 head of GDS II design team
- co-founder of Transcription Enterprises Limited (acquired in 2000 by Numerical Technologies, Inc)
- Josef S. Sukonick
- 1969 PhD MIT math
- Robert Young 1973-
- 1973 manager documentation & training
- 1975 manager of customer support
- Mark Zimmer
- member GDS II development team
- 1991 co-founder of Fractal Design Corp, CEO 1991-1997
[edit] References
- [BEN73] Robert Benders, Calma memo dated 12/18/73
- [BIS81] Lemuel D. Bishop, article in the first issue of the yet-to-be-named "Viewport" Calma company employee newsletter, Feb 1981
- [BW80] Business Week 12/22/80, p 22
- [FOR80] Forbes, 9/29/80, p 146 (interview with Paul Henson, chair of UTI)
- [HOL90] Bruce Holloway web post quoted in "Ray Tracing News", vol. 3 no. 4, October 1, 1990. http://jedi.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/raytracer/rtn/rtnv3n4.html
- [INT76] Calma internal document dated 8/06/76
- [PH74] Calma company phone list dated 9/11/74
- [PH76] Calma company phone list dated 11/17/76
- [SCH81] Thomas J. Schaefer, "GDS-II : An efficient and extensible VLSI design system", IEEE Compcon, Spring 1981, pp. 333-336
- [SFC81] San Francisco Chronicle, 11/04/81
- [SJM80] San Jose Mercury News, 12/09/80
- [SJM82] San Jose Mercury News, 4/19/82, p 3D
- [UT78] United Telecommunications prospectus dated 8/16/78 and Calma Company proxy statement for special shareholder meeting 8/31/78 to approve merger of Calma with UTI
