Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
, was an early vendor of
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 ...
software. The company was best known for its
design rule checking
In electronic design automation, a design rule is a geometric constraint imposed on circuit board, semiconductor device, and integrated circuit (IC) designers to ensure their designs function properly, reliably, and can be produced with acceptabl ...
product ''Dracula'', but also produced IC layout and PC layout software. Eventually, in a merger with SDA, it became
Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational corporation, multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The co ...
.
ECAD history
ECAD was founded in August 1982 by Paul Huang, Ping Chao, and Glen M. Antle, who had worked at
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...
,
ITT
ITT may refer to:
Communication
* Infantry-Tank Telephone, a device allowing infantrymen to speak to the occupants of armoured vehicles.
Mathematics
*Intuitionistic type theory, other name of Martin-Löf Type Theory
*Intensional type theory
B ...
,
Teledyne
Teledyne Technologies Incorporated is an American industrial conglomerate. It was founded in 1960, as Teledyne, Inc., by Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky.
From August 1996 to November 1999, Teledyne existed as part of the conglomerate Al ...
,
Data General
Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer ...
, and (just before founding ECAD), the microelectronics products division of Systems Engineering Laboratories (SEL) in
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California.
Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...
. While developing a new computer design at SEL, the CAD group wrote a new (and very fast) algorithm for
Design rule checking
In electronic design automation, a design rule is a geometric constraint imposed on circuit board, semiconductor device, and integrated circuit (IC) designers to ensure their designs function properly, reliably, and can be produced with acceptabl ...
(DRC). These ideas eventually became the basis of ECAD's products.
In 1982, SEL was acquired by Gould Inc., and part of the CAD group spun out as ECAD.
ECAD's first product was Dracula, introduced in April 1983. It included a design-rule checker, an electrical rule checker, and a
layout-versus-schematic
The Layout Versus Schematic (LVS) is the class of electronic design automation (EDA) verification software that determines whether a particular integrated circuit layout corresponds to the original schematic or circuit diagram of the design.
Bac ...
consistency checker among other programs. This was followed by SYMBAD, an
IC layout
Integrated circuit layout, also known IC layout, IC mask layout, or mask design, is the representation of an integrated circuit in terms of planar geometric shapes which correspond to the patterns of metal, oxide, or semiconductor layers that make ...
product suite.
ECAD sold only software, an unusual business tactic at this time. However, it was consistently profitable. In 1987, it went public on NASDAQ, and in 1988 in a merger with SDA Systems, it became
Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational corporation, multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The co ...