Frankfurt-based transport and communications firm Agiv Aktiengesellschaft fr Industrie und Verkehrswesen – the 100% owner of Calay Systems GmbH, has come to an agreement with Siemens AG under which Siemens will take over Calay’s computer-aided design activities in the electronics sector from September 30 1990, Computerwoche reports. The Mnchener wants to get their hands on the Prisma software package – a computer-aided design tool – as a new element within its suite of computer-aided engineering tools within Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG. To guarantee software support, those employees currently working on Prisma will also be taken on, Horst Gotthardt, head of the computer-aided engineering systems division at Siemens, notes. Gotthardt says that the Calay software will enable Siemens to offer applications for the entire chip design process, from design through implementation, verification, test-engineering and layout, to pre-production, which he reckons will make Siemens one of the top European suppliers of electronic design automation systems. Gotthardt reckons that Siemens’ business in computer-aided engineering will total about $125m a year, with a fifth coming from the electronics sector. As for the role that the CAD-Lab development project, sponsored by Nixdorf at Paderborn University, will play in future plans, he says that CAD-Lab will be kept going within the framework of development activities at the new Siemens-Nixdorf company and employees involved in the project will be kept on.
