Following on from yesterday’s merger between Synosys Inc and Epic Design Technology Inc comes another chip software amalgamation, similarly led by the industry’s move to deep sub-micron process technologies. Ten year-old Quickturn Design Systems Inc of Mountain View, California has a definitive agreement to acquire prvately-held SpeedSim Inc, of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, which specializes in cycle-based simulation technology. Quickturn, which describes itself as a market leader in logic emulation, says it has just completed its first $100m year. Its System Realizer and Logic Animator products create a virtual silicon representation of an electronic design to permit concurrent verification of application-specific integrated circuits and full-custom ICs with system hardware and software. SpeedSim, which was founded in 1993, says that nearly all of its customers also use Quickturn emulation software. Its SpeedSim/3 digital logic simulation product runs on Unix workstations. Both companies are focused exclusively on the design verification market. Quickturn will pay 2.8 million new shares for SpeedSim, valuing the company at an indicated $54.6m. No SpeedSim sales figures were given.
