Synopsys To Acquire ESL Vendor CoWare

SAN FRANCISCO—EDA and IP vendor Synopsys Inc. announced its second major acquisition in two weeks Monday (Feb. 8), saying it signed a definitive agreement to buy electronic system-level design software vendor Coware Inc. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Synopsys (Mountain View, Calif.) said the acquisition would expand its portfolio of system design and verification products used in wireless, consumer and automotive design. "It looks like Synopsys is serious about ESL," said Gary Smith, principal analyst at market research firm Gary Smith EDA. The acquisition of CoWare "wraps up" the software virtual prototyping market, Smith said. "With Mentor now controlling the ESL synthesis market, that makes two of the ESL killer aps down, three more to go," Smith said. The remaining ESL markets to be addressed by the big EDA vendors are silicon virtual prototype, architect's workbench, anbd network on chip/embedded virtualization software (including power minimization control). "There could be some more on the embedded software side but we need more R&D before they will be identified," Smith said. A spokesperson for Synopsys said the company had not determined whether CoWare employees and executives would join Synopsys as a result of the acquisition. "We value the knowledge and expertise of CoWare's employees and will be carefully reviewing transition plans in the next few weeks," the spokesperson said. Joachim Kunkel, senior vice president and general manager of the Synopsys' Solutions Group, said through a statement that the acquisition would enable to the EDA leader to develop and bring new standards-based solutions to market so engineers can more quickly design processor and software-intensive products. "System-level design and verification solutions have been gaining traction among developers as chips have gotten more complex and embedded software has become more pervasive," Kunkel said. CoWare (San Jose, Calif.) said in a statement of its own that it brings to Synopsys a range of electronic system design solutions covering processor design, system architecture design, verification, software development and algorithm design. "We have developed a significant product offering based on standards-based technologies and solutions that IP, semiconductor and systems companies have successfully deployed," said Alan Naumann, CoWare president and CEO. Last week, Synopsys announced the acquisition of virtual system prototyping technology provider Vast Systems Technology Corp. Financial terms of that deal were also not disclosed.