Mentor Graphics Grabs Chip Tools Maker

Tools from the leading vendors -- Cadence Design Systems(CDNS Quote), Synopsys(SNPS Quote) and Magma Design Automation(LAVA Quote) -- were two-and-a-half years late, and that forced chip designers to develop their own tools for the latest process technologies, he said.

"This is how Cadence got to be No. 1 in the inflection point" when the previous generation of EDA tools disrupted design methods in the late 1990s, Smith said. "Cadence attacked at both ends of the disruption. Mentor is attacking [using] both DFM and ESL."

Magma has been grabbing market share with its comparable tools for the newer process technologies, Smith said. And privately held software developer Pyxis Technology also sells some of the newer tools.

STMicroelectronics is already using tools from both Mentor and Sierra, according to the announcement. Philippe Magarshack, STMicro group vice president, was quoted as saying the company uses their tools "to address critical discontinuities that we identified in the design flow."