Cadence to Acquire Bell Labs EDA Group

Staff -- Semiconductor International, 10/1/1998

Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.) and Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.) announced an agreement under which Cadence will acquire Bell Labs Design Automation Group (BLDA) and provide Lucent with electronic design automation (EDA) services for three years. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Over 100 BLDA employees will join Cadence.

The two companies also announced a joint development program to advance the state of the art in chip verification and other advanced tools for next-generation applications. The BLDA group has developed an advanced suite of high-level design verification tools and methods used internally at Lucent and a growing number of other semiconductor vendors and systems manufacturers. The goal is to develop commercial products for multi-level, full-system verification of systems-on-a-chip (SOC).

The BLDA technology portfolio acquired by Cadence includes the FormalCheck model checker, CLOVER physical verification tool suite, ATTSIM analog/digital/mixed-signal simulator and the Celerity transistor-level simulator. Product roadmaps and integration plans for BLDA products currently are in development.