Following the decision to shift its focus towards system-on-a-chip development (CI No 3,362), Oki Electric Industry Co Ltd has signed an agreement with Cadence Design Systems Inc to help it achieve its aim. Cadence, San Jose-based developer of electronics design tools, will provide Oki with consultancy services and design tools so it can successfully perform the transition to a new development process. Oki, headquartered in Yokohama, Japan intends to take advantage of Cadence’s assistance, enabling it rapidly develop advanced chips, focusing specifically on the development, sharing and reusing of intellectual property. When Oki announced its intention last month to move towards system-on-a-chip development as a result of the international surplus of memory chips, the company said it wanted to grow its semiconductor business to $1.56bn from $1.22bn by 2000. Now, it has added that by 2000 its semiconductor business will be represented in equal portions, comprising of memory, logic and the new system-on-a-chip products. Oki believes Cadence will be able to propel it to a prominent position in the up and coming system-on-a-chip field. The Cadence software and services will be used to architect a new design environment within Oki, based on its own internal design methodology, which it has called Silicon Platform Architecture, or SPA. Oki is under the impression that SPA will help standardize the platform on which system-on-a-chip devices are integrated. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
