Daisy Systems Corporation, incorporated in 1981 in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

, was a

computer-aided engineering Computer-aided engineering (CAE) is the broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering analysis tasks. It includes , , , durability and optimization. It is included with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) ...

company, a pioneer in the

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

(EDA) industry. Daisy Logician (51333058754)

It was a manufacturer of

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

hardware and

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 ...

for EDA, including

schematic capture Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer. This is done interactiv ...

logic simulation Logic simulation is the use of simulation software to predict the behavior of digital circuits and hardware description languages. Simulation can be performed at varying degrees of physical abstraction, such as at the transistor level, gate lev ...

, parameter extraction and other tools for

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 ...

design and semiconductor chip layout. In mid-1980s, it had a subsidiary in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, Daisy Systems GmbH and one in Israel. The company merged with Cadnetix Corporation of

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

in 1988, with the resulting company then known officially as Daisy/Cadnetix, Inc. with the trade name DAZIX. It filed for protection under

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

of the Federal Bankruptcy Code in 1990 and was acquired by

Intergraph Intergraph Corporation was an American software development and services company, which now forms part of Hexagon AB. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the w ...

later that year. Intergraph incorporated DAZIX into its EDA business unit, which was later spun off as an independent subsidiary named VeriBest, Inc. VeriBest was ultimately acquired by

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 ...

in late 1999. The Veribest tool suite became Mentors flagship layout tool. Today it is known as Mentor Xpedition. Daisy Systems was founded by Aryeh Finegold, David Stamm and Vinod Khosla; its original investors were Fred Adler and Oak Investment Partners. Daisy along with

Valid Logic Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The company produces software, ...

and

, collectively known as DMV, added front end design to the existing

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

aspects of computer automation.

People

Many notable people in the EDA industry once worked for Daisy Systems, including Harvey Jones, who became the CEO of

Synopsys 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 ...

, and

Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such ...

, who, a year later in 1982, co-founded

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. Aryeh Finegold went on to co-found

Mercury Interactive Mercury Interactive Corporation was an Israeli company acquired by the HP Software Division. Mercury offered software for application management, application delivery, change and configuration management, service-oriented architecture, change r ...

, and Dave Stamm and Don Smith went on to co-found

Clarify Clarification, clarifications, or clarify may refer to: * Clarification (journalism) * Clarification (cooking), purification of broths * Clarification, preparation of clarified butter * Clarification and stabilization of wine * Clarification (wa ...

. Tony Zingale became CEO of Clarify and then CEO of Mercury Interactive and later CEO of Jive Software. Mike Schuh co-founded Intrinsa Corporation before joining

Foundation Capital Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital. History Foundation Capital was founded in 1995. The firm raised its sevent ...

as General Partner. George T. Haber went on to work at Sun and later founded CompCore Multimedia,

GigaPixel A gigapixel image is a digital image bitmap composed of one billion (109) pixels (picture elements), 1000 times the information captured by a 1 megapixel digital camera. A square image of 31,623 pixels in width and height is one gigapixel. Cur ...

, Mobilygen and CrestaTech. Dave Millman and Rick Carlson founded EDAC (now ESD Alliance), the industry organization for

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

vendors.

Software

Daisy applications ran on the Daisy-DNIX operating system, a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

-like operating system running on Intel

80286 The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...

and later processors. In 1983 DABL (Daisy Behavioral Language) was developed at Daisy by Fred Chow. It was a hardware modelling language similar to

VHDL The VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is a hardware description language (HDL) that can model the behavior and structure of digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from the system level down to that of logic gates ...

. The use of DABL for simulation models of processor interconnection networks is described by Lynn R. Freytag.

References

{{reflist 1981 establishments in California 1990 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1981 American companies disestablished in 1990 Companies based in Mountain View, California Computer companies established in 1981 Computer companies disestablished in 1990 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies of the United States Electronic design automation companies