It was a very good week for low power engineering, although you have to do more than just scratch the surface to figure out why.

Mentor Graphics connected the dots on test and yield analysis, building on its own internal development in the yield space and coupling that with its LogicVision acquisition. The result is a new solution called Tessent, whose purpose is to sort through the rising mass of data in complex chips and simplify it. This could be a great step forward if it works as well as Mentor’s pitch, particularly in complex designs involving low-power techniques such as power islands and multiple power states at different voltages.

Virage Logic completed its acquisition of ARC International. This should prove to be an interesting marriage, in large part because the sum of the two is greater than the parts. Virage has the capability to target much broader markets than ARC did. It now has IP for the processor, memory and logic areas—and some very close ties to the major foundries. And all of this is a low-power play, which makes it particularly interesting should it ever decide to play alongside ARM and Intel’s Atom.

This proved to be a good week for indirect distribution channels, too. Mentor signed up Authorize Pty as a distributor for its FPGA and PCB products. Those kinds of products have to go through distribution because they’re low margin, high volume. That means direct sales are too expensive. This is how you come out on top down under.

And Synopsys announced that Arrow Electronics, another big distributor, cut its test development schedule by using automatic test pattern generation with multicore processing with TetraMAX. A lot of the stuff to design at the nano-design level can be applied to the macro world, as well. Consider this a case in point, and a nice potential growth market for EDA vendors.

Infineon and TSMC will jointly develop a 65nm embedded flash process for microcontrollers used in automobiles and chip cards. Embedded flash is also less susceptible to radiation from packaging than DRAM and draws lower power. That’s been Actel’s whole pitch for its Fusion and Igloo lines.

Also on the foundry side, Chartered Semiconductor’s shareholders approved ATIC’s bid to acquire the company. Our prediction: Globalfoundries becomes the leading edge foundry with the most advanced process technology and SOI substrates, Chartered comes in one or two nodes behind running on either SOI or bulk CMOS, and potentially another foundry is added for older process technology. That way equipment is bought once, processes are developed once, and everything is passed down the line.