Mentor Names VP Of New Ventures

PARIS — Mentor Graphics Corp. announced it has named Serge Leef, current general manager of the System Level Engineering division, as vice president of New Ventures, to expand the company into markets adjacent to EDA. Contacted by EE Times, Leef said his "primary goal will be to take technologies we have and use them to address problems outside of EDA in markets like automotive, medical device, etc." For that, he said he would take a systems approach to solving their design challenges. "This will likely include both acquisitions and internal development." Asked if the acquisition of Freescale's Virtual Garage product line earlier this week was in line with such strategy, Leef answered positively. He commented: "Yes, the Virtual Garage acquisition builds our strength in automotive where mentor has been investing for some years." Leef noted that the position of Vice President of New Ventures is new. Prior to joining Mentor Graphics in 1990, Leef was in charge of design automation at Silicon Graphics. Previously, he managed a CAE/CAD organization at Microchip Inc. and, from 1982 to 1987, he worked at Intel Corp., where he developed functional and physical design and verification tools for major 8- and 16-bit microcontroller and microprocessor programs. EE Times recently asked Gary Smith whether big EDA companies —Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys, Magma— would keep going or change course? So was his answer: "With the exception of Mentor, they will change course or fade away. Mentor is well-positioned for the future, the rest are not." To this, Leef commented: "We believe going forward that systems design will become the largest challenge that companies face. Mentor has a long leadership tradition in systems design, and a powerful set of technologies to match."