Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and

ECAD, Inc. {{anchor, Dracula, SymbadECAD, Inc., based in Santa Clara, California, was an early vendor of electronic design automation software. The company was best known for its design rule checking product ''Dracula'', but also produced IC layout and PC la ...

The company produces

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, hardware and silicon structures for designing

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

s, systems on chips (SoCs) and

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...

History

Origins

Cadence Design Systems began as an electronic design automation (EDA) company, formed by the 1988 merger of Solomon Design Automation (SDA), co-founded in 1983 by Richard Newton,

Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli Alberto Luigi Sangiovanni-Vincentelli (born June 23, 1947) is an Italian-American computer scientist. He currently sits on the board of directors of Cadence Design Systems, an EDA company he co-founded in 1988. Biography Born in Milan, Italy ...

and

James Solomon James E. Solomon (born 1936 in Boise, Idaho) is an American engineer and entrepreneur. In his lifetime, he has founded four companies, including one of the companies that merged to form the leading chip manufacturing toolmaker Cadence Design Sys ...

, and

ECAD Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work togethe ...

, a public company co-founded by Ping Chao, Glen Antle and Paul Huang in 1982. SDA's CEO Joseph Costello was appointed as CEO of the newly combined company.

Executive leadership

Following the resignation of Cadence's original CEO Joe Costello in 1997, Jack Harding was appointed CEO. Ray Bingham was named CEO in 1999. In 2004, Mike Fister became Cadence's new CEO. In 2008, Cadence's board appointed

Lip-Bu Tan Lip-Bu Tan (born November 12, 1959) is a Malaysian-born American executive and entrepreneur presently the executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems and Chairman of Walden International, a venture capital firm. Early life and education Born ...

as acting CEO, after the resignation of Mike Fister; Tan had served on the Cadence board of directors since 2004. In January 2009, the board of directors of Cadence voted unanimously to confirm Lip-Bu Tan as president and CEO. Tan had been most recently CEO of Walden International, a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm, where he remains chairman of the firm. On December 15, 2021, Anirudh Devgan assumed the role of president & CEO, and Lip-Bu Tan became executive chairman. Devgan joined Cadence in 2012 and was appointed president in 2017.

Products

The company develops software, hardware and intellectual properties (IP) used to design chips, systems and

s, as well as IP covering interfaces, memory, analog, SoC peripherals, data plane processing units, and verification.

Custom IC technologies

*Virtuoso Platform. Tools for designing full-custom

s; includes schematic entry, behavioral modeling ( Verilog-AMS), circuit simulation, custom layout, physical verification, extraction and back-annotation. Used mainly for

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analo ...

, mixed-signal, RF, and standard-cell designs, but also

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

and

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

designs. * Spectre X. In June 2019, Cadence introduced Spectre X parallel circuit simulator, so that users could distribute time- and frequency-domain simulations across hundreds of CPUs for faster runtime and speed. *AWR is a

radio frequency Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around to around . This is roughly between the upp ...

to millimeter wave design environment for designing 5G/

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

products. Used for communications, aerospace and defense, semiconductor, computer and consumer electronics.

Digital implementation and signoff technologies

*Genus, Innovus, Tempus & Voltus. In March 2020, Cadence announced that its Innovus

place and route Place and route is a stage in the design of printed circuit boards, integrated circuits, and field-programmable gate arrays. As implied by the name, it is composed of two steps, placement and routing. The first step, placement, involves deciding ...

engine and optimizer were now integrated into Genus

Synthesis Synthesis or synthesize may refer to: Science Chemistry and biochemistry *Chemical synthesis, the execution of chemical reactions to form a more complex molecule from chemical precursors ** Organic synthesis, the chemical synthesis of organ ...

, with both tools using a common user interface and database. *Stratus

High-level synthesis High-level synthesis (HLS), sometimes referred to as C synthesis, electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis, algorithmic synthesis, or behavioral synthesis, is an automated design process that takes an abstract behavioral specification of a digital ...

tool that creates RTL implementations from C, C++, or SystemC code. *Cerebrus. In July 2021, Cadence announced its

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

-based Cerebrus chip explorer product to automatically optimize the Cadence digital design flow for specified power, performance, and area goals across multiple blocks. Cerebrus utilizes a reinforcement learning approach to increase efficiency each time the optimization process is repeated. Other Cadence RTL to GDS II tools: Conformal Equivalence Checker, Stratus High-Level Synthesis, Joules Power Analysis, Quantus RC Extraction, Modus AutomaticTest Pattern Generation.

Verification technologies

*Xcelium. Xcelium is a parallel simulator, introduced in 2017, based on a multi-core

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

architecture. *JasperGold. JasperGold is a

formal verification In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal metho ...

tool, initially introduced in 2003. In 2019, Cadence announced new machine learning technology to automate JasperGold solver selection and parameterization to achieve faster first-time proofs; additionally to optimize regression runs. *Perspec System Verifier. Perspec was announced in 2014, for defining and verifying system-level verification scenarios, and then creating test cases to verify the scenarios using constraint-solving technology. In mid-2018, Cadence announced that Perspec supported the new Accellera Portable Test and Stimulus Standard (PSS) standard *vManager. vManager is verification management tool for tracking verification process, including coverage, using emulation, simulation and/or formal technology as the data source(s). *Palladium. In 2015, Cadence announced the Palladium Z1

Hardware emulation In integrated circuit design, hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware (typically a system under design) with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system. The emu ...

platform, with over 100 million gates per hour compile speed, and greater than 1 MHz execution for billion-gate designs. Cadence's Palladium emulator was originally from Cadence's Quickturn acquisition in 1998. In 2021, Cadence announced Palladium Z2, claiming a 1.5X performance and 2X capacity improvement over the prior Palladium Z1, for more than 18 billion gate+ capacity. Additionally, Cadence claimed Palladium Z2 could compile 10 billion gates in under 10 hours. *Protium. The Protium FPGA prototyping platform was officially introduced in 2014. In 2017, Cadence introduced the Protium S1 built on

Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the fi ...

Virtex UltraScale

FPGAs A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

. In 2019, Protium X1 rack-based prototyping was introduced, which Cadence claimed supported a 1.2 billion gate SoCs at around 5 MHz. Palladium S1/X1 and Protium share a single compilation flow. In 2021, Protium X2 was announced; Cadence claimed a 1.5X performance and 2X capacity improvement over Protium X1, and that Protium X2 could compile 10 billion gates in under 24 hours.

Intellectual property

Design IP targeting areas including memory / storage / high-performance interface protocols (USB or PCIe controllers and PHYs), Tensilica

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

processors for audio, vision, wireless modems and convolutional neural nets. Tensilica DSP processors IP include: Tensilica Vision DSPs for Imaging, Vision and AI processing; Tensilica HiFi DSPs for Audio/Voice/Speech processing; Tensilica Fusion DSPs for

IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

; Tensilica ConnX DSPs for

Radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

Lidar Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...

, and Communications processing.; and Tensilica DNA Processor Family for AI acceleration In 2021, Cadence launched the Tensilica AI Platform to accelerate AI SoC development and improve power, performance and area—targeting mobile, IoT, automotive,

intelligent sensor An intelligent sensor is a sensor that takes some predefined action when it senses the appropriate input (light, heat, sound, motion, touch, etc.). Description The sensor has to do the following tasks: *Give a digital signal. *Be able to communi ...

, and industrial AI SoC designs.

PCB and packaging technologies

*Allegro Platform. Tools for co-design of

s, packages, and

PCB PCB may refer to: Science and technology * Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant * Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics * ...

s, including the

Specctra Specctra is a commercial PCB auto-router originally developed by John F. Cooper and David Chyan of Cooper & Chyan Technology, Inc. (CCT) in 1989. The company and product were taken over by Cadence Design Systems in May 1997. Since its integration ...

auto-router. *

OrCAD OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to ...

/ PSpice. Tools for smaller design teams and individual PCB designers. *OrbitIO Interconnect Designer. Die/package planning & route optimization tool. *InspectAR. InspectAR uses

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

to map out complicated circuit board electronics for real-time labelling of board

schematics A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the sc ...

System analysis

Sigrity Sigrity, acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 2012 for $80M. 2], supplies software for IC package physical design and for analyzing power integrity, signal integrity and design stage electromagnetic interference (EMI). Analysis is performed on c ...

. Tools for signal, power integrity and thermal integrity analysis and IC package design.EE Time
Cadence Pays $80 million to buy signal integrity firm
Retrieved July 3, 2012 *Clarity. Cadence introduced Clarity in April 2019, as part of its expansion into system analysis. Clarity is a 3D

field solver Electromagnetic field solvers (or sometimes just field solvers) are specialized programs that solve (a subset of) Maxwell's equations directly. They form a part of the field of electronic design automation, or EDA, and are commonly used in the de ...

for electromagnetic analysis, that uses distributed adaptive meshing to partition jobs across on hundreds of cores for gains in speed and capacity. *Celsius. In September 2019, Cadence announced Celsius, a parallel architecture thermal solver that uses finite element analysis for solid structures and

computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate th ...

(CFD) for fluids. *Omnis. Omnis is a computational fluid dynamics, mesh generation,

multi-physics In computational modelling, multiphysics simulation (often shortened to simply "multiphysics") is defined as the simultaneous simulation of different aspects of a physical system or systems and the interactions among them. For example, simultaneous ...

simulation & optimization product, with established applications in aerospace, automotive, industrial and marine. (From NUMECA acquisition in 2021.)eeNews Europ
Cadence buys Belgian CFD specialist
Retrieved Jan 21, 2021 *Pointwise. Pointwise computational fluid dynamics (CFD) mesh generation. (From Pointwise acquisition in 2021.)eeNew
OneSpin deal leads flurry of EDA acquisitions: Page 2 of 3
Retrieved Apr 15, 2021

Recognition

In 2020, Fortune Magazine named Cadence to Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For list" for the sixth consecutive year. Also in 2020, Cadence was ranked #45 in PEOPLE magazine's Companies that Care. In 2019, Investor's Business Daily ranked Cadence Design Systems #5 on its 50 Best Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Companies list. In 2016, Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan was awarded the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award by the Global Semiconductor Alliance.

Sponsorship

In May 2022,

McLaren McLaren Racing Limited is a British motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor, the second oldest active team, and the second most successful Formul ...

announced a multi-year partnership deal with Cadence.

Acquisitions

Timeline

The company has also acquired High-Level Design (HLD), UniCAD, CadMOS, Ambit Design Systems, Simplex, Silicon Perspective, Plato, and Get2Chip.

*In 2007, Cadence was rumored to be in talks with

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strate ...

and Blackstone Group regarding a possible sale of the company. *In 2008, Cadence withdrew a $1.6 billion offer to purchase rival

Mentor Graphics Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens in ...

Lawsuits

*Avanti Corporation From 1995 until 2002, Cadence was involved in a 6-year-long legal disputeBusiness Week (pay wall)
overview of the entire case, after the criminal trial but before the purchase by Synopsys. with

Avanti Corporation Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design ...

(brand name "Avant!"), in which Cadence claimed Avanti stole Cadence code, and Avanti denied it. According to Business Week ''"The Avanti case is probably the most dramatic tale of white-collar crime in the history of Silicon Valley"''. The Avanti executives eventually pleaded ''no contest'' and Cadence received several hundred million dollars in restitution. Avanti was then purchased by Synopsys, which paid $265 million more to settle the remaining claims. The case resulted in a number of legal precedents. *Aptix Corporation Quickturn Design Systems, a company acquired by Cadence, was involved in a series of legal events with Aptix Corporation. Aptix licensed a patent to

and the two companies jointly sued Quickturn over an alleged patent infringement. Amr Mohsen, CEO of Aptix, forged and tampered with legal evidence and was subsequently charged with conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Mohsen was arrested after violating his bail agreement by attempting to flee the country. While in jail, Mohsen plotted to intimidate witnesses and kill the federal judge presiding over his case. Mohsen was further charged with attempting to delay a federal trial by feigning incompetency. Due to the overwhelming misconduct, the judge ruled the lawsuit as unenforceable and Mohsen was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Mentor Graphics subsequently sued Aptix to recoup legal costs. Cadence also sued Mentor Graphics and Aptix to recover legal costs. *Berkeley Design Automation In 2013, Cadence sued Berkeley Design Automation (BDA) for circumvention of a license scheme to link its Analog FastSpice (AFS) simulator to Cadence's Analog Design Environment (Virtuoso ADE). The lawsuit was settled less than one year later with an undisclosed payment of BDA and a multi-year agreement to support interoperability of AFS with ADE through Cadence's official interface. BDA was bought by

a few months later.

Notable persons

, co-founder * Richard Newton, co-founder *

, co-founder *

Ken Kundert Kenneth S. Kundert is an engineer that is notable for his work in the area of Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley under professors Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Robe ...

, fellow. Creator of the

Spectre Spectre, specter or the spectre may refer to: Religion and spirituality * Vision (spirituality) * Apparitional experience * Ghost Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Spectre'' (1977 film), a made-for-television film produced and writ ...

circuit simulation family of products (including

SpectreRF SpectreRF is an option to the Spectre Circuit Simulator from Cadence Design Systems. It adds a series of analyses that are particularly useful for RF circuits to the basic capabilities of Spectre. SpectreRF was first released in 1996 and was notab ...

) and the Verilog-A analog hardware description language * Joseph Costello,

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

, 1988–1997 *

, CEO, 2009–2021 * Anirudh Devgan, President 2017-2021, President & CEO, 2021–present *

Penny Herscher Penny Herscher is an American executive in electronic design automation industry, formerly with Cadence Design Systems. She was Chairman and CEO of Simplex Solutions when the company IPO’d, subsequently acquired by Cadence in 2002 Within Cadenc ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Electronic design automation companies Electronics companies of the United States Software companies of the United States Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in San Jose, California American companies established in 1988 Electronics companies established in 1988 Software companies established in 1988 1988 establishments in California Companies listed on the Nasdaq