Cadence Design Systems

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Cadence Design Systems, Inc (Nasdaq: CDNS) is an electronic design automation (EDA) software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD.

As of 2004, Cadence is the world's largest supplier of electronic design technologies and engineering services. Cadence products and services are used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductor devices, computer systems, networking equipment, telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and other electronics based products. The primary corporate product is software used to design chips and printed circuit boards. With approximately 4,850 employees and 2003 revenues of approximately $1.1 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and trades on Nasdaq under the symbol CDNS.

Cadence products for EDA manage the entire process, including system design, logic synthesis, and layout of integrated circuits. In addition, the company has other related products, including tools for integrated circuit packaging and PCB design. Their software offerings are organized around "platforms" targeted at various types of design tasks which include:

Virtuoso, a suite of programs for designing full-custom integrated circuits; includes schematic entry, circuit simulation, full custom layout, and extraction. Used mainly for analog, mixed-signal, RF (w/Agilent EEsof EDA), and standard-cell designs, but also memory and FPGA circuits.
Encounter, includes floorplanning, synthesis, test, and place and route-tools for creation of digital integrated circuits. Typically a digital design starts from Verilog netlists.
Incisive, includes tools for simulation and functional verification of Verilog, VHDL, and SystemC netlists. Includes formal verification, formal equivalence checking, hardware acceleration, and emulation.
Silicon-Package-Board, includes tools for co-design of integrated circuits, packages, and PCBs.
Allegro is used to design PCBs, as is ORCAD.
Concept is used to draw schematics, that are usually fed into Allegro.

In addition to EDA software, Cadence provides design services for electronic design and manufacture industries.

As of 2005, Cadence's major competitors are Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, and Magma Design Automation.

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Acquisitions and mergers

Cadence has been involved with many mergers and acquisitions. Some of the larger examples of companies merged in or acquired are: Valid Logic Systems, High Level Design (HLD), Cooper and Chyan (CCT), Quickturn, Simplex, Silicon Perspective, and Plato. The latest major activity is: