By Ed Sperling

Business seems to be picking up everywhere in the design world, with an emphasis on speed—quicker deals, faster product rollouts and overall time to market—and all of it with an underlying emphasis on low power and tighter power budgets. Could it be that after the recession, everyone is trying to get back on track quickly?

Virage Logic completed the acquisition of NXP’s IP technology and its development team. That comes on the heels of its recent acquisition of ARC. The fact that Virage completed both of these acquisitions in a 12-day period is nothing short of an accounting miracle. And just in case the company didn’t have enough to do, it added a Silicon Browser for post-silicon bring-up and system debug.

Android seems to be getting its share of attention these days. Mentor Graphics introduced an Android Development System for Texas Instrument’s OMAP35x processors. TI’s processors also include ARM Cortex-A8 technology, which puts ARM squarely in the center of this effort, as well, with a heavy push toward better battery life. But will any of this take a bite out of the Apple iPhone?

On the get-things-done-quicker side, Digital Imaging Systems used Synopsys’ Galaxy Custom Designer to achieve first-pass silicon in 22 days. Not all of it was from scratch, of course, but that’s still a very tight timetable.

And Atrenta’s deal with Fujitsu’s Kyushu Network Technologies is aimed at reducing design risks in integration of third-party IP from multiple vendors with different clock domains. Translation: Faster time to market.

Also on the business side, Cadence expanded its design alliance with Toshiba for the consumer and mobile markets.

Intel invested millions of Euros in an Exascale Computing Research in France, as part of Intel Labs Europe. This is the second time in two weeks that Intel has paid out big bucks to appease antitrust regulators. This deal will add 900 new research jobs in Europe. That follows Intel’s settlement with AMD, clearing the way for Intel to go after ARM with its Atom chip.

ARM’s comeback was largely a reiteration of the strength of its ecosystem. It struck up a strategic architectural license agreement with Infineon for advanced security applications and created a solutions center for Android.