cadence r & d center type public traded as nasdaq cdns industry software & programming founded 1988 headquarters san jose california united states key people lip bu tan president ceo revenue 1.702 billion usd 2015 net income 252 million usd 2015 number of employees 6786 april 2 2016 1 website www.cadence.com cadence design systems inc nasdaq cdns is an american multinational electronic design automation eda software and engineering services company founded in 1988 by the merger of sda systems and ecad inc. the company produces software and hardware for designing integrated circuits systems on chips socs and printed circuit boards . contents 1 overview 2 history 3 products 4 lawsuits 4.1 avanti corporation 4.2 mentor graphics 5 acquisitions 5.1 timeline 5.2 denali software 5.3 valid logic systems 6 notable persons 7 see also 8 references 9 external links overview edit cadence design systems headquartered in san jose california is a supplier of electronic design technologies and engineering services in the electronic design automation eda industry . the company develops software used to design chips 2 and printed circuit boards 3 as well as intellectual properties ip covering a broad range of areas including interfaces memory analog soc peripherals dataplane processing units and verification . cadence products primarily target fpga and asic design engineers and are used to move a design into packaged silicon asic with products for custom and analog design digital design mixed signal design verification and package pcb design . to help integrate verify and implement complex digital socs there are solutions that encompass design ip timing analysis and signoff services and tools and methodologies . the company also provides products that assist with the development of complete hardware and software platforms that support end applications . 4 history edit cadence design systems was the result of a merger perfected in 1988 of solomon design automation sda co founded in 1983 by richard newton alberto sangiovanni vincentelli and james solomon and ecad co founded by glen antle and paul huang in 1982 . joseph costello was appointed as ceo from 1988 1997 and cadence became the largest eda company during his tenure . on october 15 2008 cadence president and ceo michael fister and four other top executives resigned namely executive vice president of worldwide field operations kevin bushby executive vice president of products and technologies organization james s. miller jr. executive vice president and chief administrative officer william porter and executive vice president of corporate affairs r. l. smith mckeithen . this was followed by a large layoff of 20 % to 25 % of cadence s employees . 5 in january 2009 the company announced the appointment of lip bu tan as president and ceo . tan was most recently ceo of walden international a venture capital firm and remains chairman of the firm . he has served on the cadence board of directors since 2004 where he served on the technology committee for four years . in 2009 cadence announced that they would lay off 225 employees 6 and new ceo lip bu tan voluntarily reduced his salary by 20 % ; cadence s senior vice presidents and board members took a pay cut of 10 % . 7 in january 2010 cadence laid off an additional 120 workers . 8 in 2013 cadence celebrated its 25th anniversary . they are offering an online course on the mooc provider udacity called functional hardware verification . 9 at the end of 2013 the company employed more than 5 200 people and reported 2013 revenues of approximately 1.46 billion . 10 in november 2007 cadence was named one of the 50 best places to work in silicon valley by san jose magazine . citation needed in april 2014 cadence acquired jasper design automation a leader in system on chip development and ip verification tools for a 170 million cash acquisition 11 in late 2014 cadence opened a new office at matam haifa the largest and oldest dedicated hi tech parks in israel . products edit cadence s product offerings are targeted at various types of design and verification tasks which include virtuoso platform tools for designing full custom integrated circuits ; 12 includes schematic entry behavioral modeling verilog ams circuit simulation custom layout physical verification extraction and back annotation . used mainly for analog mixed signal rf and standard cell designs but also memory and fpga designs . encounter platform tools for implementation of digital integrated circuits . this includes floorplanning test place and route and clock tree synthesis . typically a digital design implementation starts from verilog netlists from the synthesized design . 13 includes nanoroute technology in the routing stage . incisive platform tools for simulation and functional verification of rtl including verilog vhdl and systemc based models . includes formal verification formal equivalence checking hardware acceleration and emulation . 14 palladium series accelerators and emulators for hardware and software co verification and system level verification . design ip cadence provides design ip targeting areas including memory dram covering ddr1 ddr2 ddr3 ddr4 lpddr2 lpddr3 lpddr4 and wide i o ; storage non volatile memory covering nvm express and nand flash controller and phy ; and high performance interface protocols such as pci express gen3 40 100g ethernet and usb 2 and usb 3 . verification ip vip cadence provides the broadest set of commercial vip available with over 30 protocols in its vip portfolio . they include amba pci express usb sata ocp sas mipi and many others . cadence vip also provides the unique compliance management system cms to automate protocol compliance verification . integration optimized ip design ip cadence offers vertically integrated ip inclusive of digital controller serdes layer and device driver . protocols supported include usb ddr pci express 10g 40g ethernet and on chip bus fabric . allegro platform tools for co design of integrated circuits packages and pcbs . 14 orcad pspice tools for smaller design teams and individual pcb designers . 14 sigrity technologies tools for signal and power verification for system level signoff verification and interface compliance . 15 since the acquisition of tensilica in 2013 in the business of semiconductor intellectual property core in addition to eda software cadence provides contracted methodology and design services as well as silicon design ip and has a program aimed at making it easier for other eda software to interoperate with the company s tools . conformal is a family of electronic design automation eda products developed and marketed by cadence design systems for digital asic and custom asic design . the flagship product conformal lec belong to the class of equivalency checking tools that help verify design and netlist transformations through a formal verification proof . there are other products offered in low power verification constraint management transistor verification and their latest offering a product in eco automation . conformal lec was first developed by verplex corporation in 1998 until the company was acquired by cadence in 2003 . lawsuits edit avanti corporation edit main article cadence design systems inc. v. avanti corp cadence was involved in a 6 year long legal dispute 16 with avanti corporation in which cadence claimed avant stole cadence code and avant denied it . according to business week the avant case is probably the most dramatic tale of white collar crime in the history of silicon valley . 16 the avant executives eventually pleaded no contest and cadence received several hundred million dollars in restitution . avant was then purchased by synopsys which paid 265 million more to settle the remaining claims . 17 the case resulted in a number of legal precedents . 18 mentor graphics edit the cadence group quickturn was also involved in a series of legal events with mentor graphics aptix . 19 mentor purchased rights to an aptix patent then sued cadence . in this case the ceo of aptix amr mohsen forged a notebook in order to make the patent case stronger . when suspicions were raised he staged a break in of his own car to get rid of the evidence resulting in charges of obstruction of justice . trying to avoid this he attempted to flee the country only to be caught with an illegal passport and a pile of cash . while in jail for this offense he was recorded offering money to intimidate witnesses and kill the judge . 20 in order to fight the new charges he tried to feign psychological problems but left a trail of evidence of his research into this defense and how it might be done . he was charged with attempting to delay a federal trial by feigning incompetency 21 but was convicted anyway . 22 according to the lawyers concerned 19 the original notebooks were not needed for the trial . the patent filing date which was not in dispute would have sufficed . acquisitions edit timeline edit may 1997 acquired cooper & chyan technology a provider of pcb and ic automatic place and router software solutions . 23 december 1998 acquired quickturn design systems inc. a market leader in microchip emulation . 24 june 1999 acquired orcad systems a market leader in shrink wrap pcb design tools . 25 october 2002 acquired ibm s test design automation group . september 2003 acquired verplex systems a provider of formal verification products conformal solutions and blacktie property checker . april 6 2004 acquired neolinear technology a privately held company specializing in rapid analog design technology . april 7 2005 acquired verisity ltd. a provider of verification process automation solutions 315 million in cash . in 2007 the company began talks with kohlberg kravis roberts and blackstone group regarding a possible sale of the company . 26 july 12 2007 acquired invarium a photolithography specialist . august 15 2007 acquired clearshape a developer of design for manufacturability dfm technology . march 11 2008 acquired chipestimate a developer of ic planning and ip reuse management tools . august 15 2008 cadence withdrew a 1.6 billion offer to purchase rival mentor graphics . 27 june 17 2010 completed acquisition of denali software . 28 may 10 2011 acquired altos design automation inc. vendor of standard and complex cell libraries for the delivery of complex socs at advanced nodes . 29 july 12 2011 acquired azuro creator of clock concurrent optimization technology . 30 july 2 2012 acquired sigrity a leader in high speed pcb and ic packaging analysis 31 february 2013 acquired cosmic circuits a provider of analog and mixed signal intellectual property ip cores . cosmic circuits offers ip products in connectivity and mixed signal technologies in the 40 nm and 28 nm process nodes with 20 nm and finfet in development . 32 the acquisition was completed in may 2013 . march 2013 acquired tensilica known for dataplane processing units dpu . tensilica provides configurable and extensible processors along with dpus for audio baseband imaging etc. it has 200 licensees and has shipped 2 billion cores so far . 33 june 2013 completed acquisition of the ip business of evatronix sa ska of poland . this acquisition brings to cadence ip including certified usb 2.0 3.0 mipi display and storage controllers . 34 february 14 2014 acquired forte design systems a provider of high level synthesis hls software products . this includes cynthesizer a systemc based behavioral synthesis tool that enables design creation at a higher level of abstraction . june 16 2014 completed acquisition of jasper design automation inc. a market and technology leader in the fast growing formal analysis sector . 35 the company has also acquired valid logic systems high level design hld unicad cadmos simplex silicon perspective plato and get2chip . denali software edit denali software inc. was an american software company based in sunnyvale california now acquired by cadence . 36 the company produces electronic design automation eda software intellectual property ip and design cores and platforms for memory other standard interfaces and system on chip soc design and verification . it has