SAN ANTONIO—Chip and system design software vendor Atrenta Inc. said Wednesday (June 20) it acquired assertion synthesis technology NextOp Software Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
NextOp’s products focus on improving efficiency and reducing cost for the functional verification of IPs and SoCs. Privately held Atrenta (San Jose, Calif.) said the acquisition of NextOp would allow the company to expand its SpyGlass register transfer level (RTL) platform to include functional verification.
Gary Smith, founder and chief analyst at Gary Smith EDA, said the
recent acquisition of Magma Design Automation Inc. by Synopsys Inc. led to renewed talk of a "roll up" in the middle of the EDA community. "The most obvious candidates are the RTL sign-off tool vendors, and the most talked about driver, of the roll-up, has been Atrenta," Smith said in a statement released by Atrenta. "This could be the start of something big, and NextOp was an excellent place to start."
Atreta's SpyGlass platform currently provides RTL design efficiency improvements in the areas of linting, clock synchronization, power optimization, testability, timing constraints and physical routing congestion, according to the company. With the acquisition, SpyGlass will now be expanded to include functional verification support using NextOp's patented dynamic assertion synthesis technology, resulting in verification efficiency improvements for semiconductor and consumer electronics developers, the company said.
"The addition of NextOp's functional verification technology will give our customers a distinct advantage by providing complete coverage of front end design activities,” said Ajoy Bose, chairman, president and CEO of Atrenta, in a statement. "Atrenta’s customers have come to rely on SpyGlass to verify a broad range of design intent, but functional verification was a missing part of our platform. NextOp’s assertion synthesis completes this part of our offering–Atrenta customers will now have added confidence that their designs will work as expected while meeting schedule and performance requirements."
Jim Hogan, a former semiconductor and EDA vendor executive who is a respected voice in EDA, said he was encouraged to see the acquisition of private company by another private company in EDA after a long dry spell. "Atrenta could be leading a trend in renewed growth for the EDA sector," Hogan said.
NextOp's BugScope assertion synthesis tool will be sold and supported by the combined Atrenta/NextOp worldwide field organization, Atrenta said. Yunshan Zhu, NextOp's president and CEO, will assume the role of vice presidentof new technologies at Atrenta, reporting to Bose, Atrenta said. Yuan Lu, co-founder and CTO of NextOp will assume the role of chief verification architect reporting Zhu, the company said.