Sony Corp’s consulting agreement with Cadence Design Systems Inc is intended to increase its presence in the integrated circuit design field: software developed by both Cadence and Sony will be enhanced to work as a seamless integrated system: the deal involves ASIC design software from Cadence, to be linked with software developed by Sony in-house to run on its News series of workstations; Sony is believed to have dropped to fourth place from third in the sales rankings of Unix workstations in Japan, while NEC Corp with its MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC workstations has risen to third place after Sun Microsystems Inc and Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard Co; Sony is reckoned to have been handicapped by the overall corporate lack of focus on computers, its previous specialisation in the office end of the market with desk-top publishing and related products, instead of on the engineering, scientific and technical field where most Unix business is done in Japan.
