Cadence Design Systems Inc has duly unveiled the plans for its worldwide center of excellence in Scotland (CI No 3,307), which will specialize in what Cadence believes is the next generation of semiconductor design, the system-on-a-chip. The center will be located on a 55-acre greenfield site in Livingston, the heart of Scotland’s ‘Silicon Glen’, and will eventually consist of a five- building campus that will focus on system level integration and system on chip technology. Cadence says it aims to create up to 1800 high paying, high intellectual content jobs by 2004, and will work closely with both academia and the public sector to build and staff the center. Cadence executive vice president Michael Bealmear would not confirm the exact level of the company’s investment, but said it would be putting in several hundred million dollars over the five to seven year period. Bealmear says the company will be creating a complete eco- system with the new facility, where he eventually envisages encouraging other semiconductor and electronics companies to share resources. The emerging market for system on a chip, which will enable not only the building of smaller and cheaper devices but also speed their time to market, is expected to reach anything up to 50bn pounds by 2000. Cadence is firmly pitching its sights at this market with the new facility. The center will also incorporate an academic institute specializing in system level integration. This is being set up by the Scottish Enterprise body and a partnership with four of Scotland’s top universities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot Watt and Strathclyde. Within eighteen months the institute hopes to offer a Masters degree in System Level Integration. Cadence also hopes eventually to establish an intellectual property exchange facility, where companies will be able to lodge IP blocks in a central repository for re-use by other companies. IBM Corp will provide the networking infrastructure and systems integration for the whole project, including the IP search engine, currently in use by a US bank, to enable this intellectual property exchange. In addition to Cadence, both the Scottish Enterprise board and the Scottish Office will invest in the project, but the Secretary of State for Scotland Donald Dewer said the value of their investment would not be revealed until a later date. The center will be housed in a temporary building for a year, from January.
