Cadence Design Systems

Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Type Public
Industry Software & Programming
Founded 1988
Headquarters San Jose, California, USA
Key people Lip-Bu Tan, President/CEO
Revenue 936 million USD (2010)
Net income $127 million USD (2010)
Employees 5,600 (2011)[1]
Website www.cadence.com

Cadence Design Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: CDNS) is an electronic design automation (EDA) software and engineering services company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. For years it had been the largest company in the EDA industry producing software for designing chips and printed circuit boards.

Contents

Overview

Cadence, headquartered in San Jose, California, is one of the world's leading suppliers of electronic design technologies and engineering services in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. The primary corporate product is software used to design chips[2] and printed circuit boards[3].

Cadence employs 5,600 people and reported 2010 revenues of approximately $936 million. In November 2007 Cadence was named one of the 50 Best Places to Work in Silicon Valley by San Jose Magazine.

In January 2009 the company announced the appointment of Lip-Bu Tan as President and CEO. Tan was most recently CEO of Walden International, a VC firm, and remains in this position. He has served on the Cadence Board of Directors since 2004, where he served on the Technology Committee for four years.

Product Families

Cadence's product offerings are targeted at various types of design and verification tasks which include:

In addition to EDA software, Cadence provides contracted methodology and design services as well as silicon design IP, and has a program to make it easier for other EDA software to interoperate with the company's tools.

Lawsuits with Avant! and Mentor/Aptix

As a large public company, Cadence has been involved in a number of legal disputes. Two in particular are notable:

Cadence was involved in a long running (6 years) legal dispute[9] with Avanti Corporation, in which Cadence claimed Avant! stole Cadence code, and Avant! denied it. According to Business Week "The Avant! case is probably the most dramatic tale of white-collar crime in the history of Silicon Valley"[9]. The Avant! executives eventually plead no contest and Cadence received several hundred million dollars in restitution. Avant! was then purchased by Synopsys, which paid $265 million more to settle the remaining claims[10]. The case resulted in a number of legal precedents[11].

The Cadence group Quickturn was also involved in an unusual series of legal events with Mentor Graphics/Aptix[12]. Mentor purchased rights to an Aptix patent, then sued Cadence. In this case, the CEO of Aptix, Amr Mohsen, forged a notebook in order to make the patent case stronger. When suspicions were raised, he staged a break-in of his own car to get rid of the evidence, resulting in charges of obstruction of justice. Trying to avoid this, he attempted to flee the country, only to be caught with an illegal passport and a pile of cash. While in jail for this offense, he was recorded offering money to intimidate witnesses and kill the judge[13]. In order to fight these charges, he tried to show psychological problems, but left a trail of evidence of his research into this defense, and how it might be done. He was charged with attempting to delay a federal trial by feigning incompetency[14], but was convicted anyway[15]. According to the lawyers concerned[12], the original notebooks were not needed for the trial. The patent filing date, which was not in dispute, would have sufficed.

Acquisitions and mergers

Cadence has been involved with many mergers and acquisitions[16]. Some of the larger examples of companies merged in or acquired are: Valid Logic Systems, High Level Design (HLD), UniCAD, Cooper and Chyan (CCT), Quickturn, CadMOS, Simplex, Silicon Perspective, Plato, Get2Chip and Verplex Systems. The latest major activity is:

Notable persons

See also

List of EDA companies

References

  1. ^ "Funding Universe". Funding Universe. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Cadence-Design-Systems-Inc-Company-History.html. Retrieved September 23, 2011. 
  2. ^ Design on Diagonal Path in Pursuit of a Faster Chip, John Markoff, New York Times, February 26, 2007
  3. ^ Cadence Acquires Software Company, New York Times, April 11, 1990. Article describes Cadence acquiring a printed circuit design software company.
  4. ^ Course description from University of Colorado
  5. ^ Tutorial from MIT course
  6. ^ "UNIX Software and CAD tools". Carleton University. http://www.doe.carleton.ca/facilities/computer_help/internal/software.php. 
  7. ^ Ibid
  8. ^ Ibid
  9. ^ a b Business Week overview of the entire case, after the criminal trial but before the purchase by Synopsys.
  10. ^ EEDesign article about the final settlement.
  11. ^ Cadence v. Avant!: The UTSA and California Trade Secret Law, Danley, J., Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 2004, Vol 19; Part 1, pages 289-308
  12. ^ a b Blind Spots, from IP Law and Business
  13. ^ In Courts, Threats Become Alarming Fact of Life, Deborah Sontag, New York Times, 20 March 2005
  14. ^ Odd legal saga takes an ugly turn, Richard Goering, EE Times, 02 August 2004
  15. ^ Jury finds Mohsen guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice, Dylan McGrath, EE Times, 28 Feb 2006
  16. ^ Specialized Software Maker Is Said to Be in Buyout Talks, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael J. de la Merced, New York Times, Published: June 4, 2007
  17. ^ [1]
  18. ^ [2]
  19. ^ Cadence Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Mentor Graphics

External links