The Week In Review: Dec. 4
By Ed Sperling
It was the best of times and it was the worst of times, but for EDA it was primarily the latter. And just how bad depended on whether you looked at the world from a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) perspective or a non-GAAP approach.
Mentor Graphics reported $189 million in revenue for fiscal Q3, ended Oct. 31, compared with $185 million in the same period in 2008. Non-GAAP earnings were 5 cents a share vs. a GAAP loss of 28 cents. Mentor said sales were up for test, place and route and DFM, and that the outlook for fiscal Q4, which ends Jan. 31, is about $220 million in revenue with non-GAAP earnings of 44 cents per share and GAAP earnings of 33 cents per share. For fiscal 2010 the company expects revenue to increase 1% from fiscal 2009 to $795 million.
Synopsys, meanwhile, posted revenue of $338 million for its fiscal Q4, also ended Oct. 31, compared with $353 million in the same period last year. On a GAAP basis, it showed a profit of 13 cents a share, while on a non-GAAP basis it was $1.75 per share—up slightly from 2008. Revenue targets for the quarter ending Jan. 31 are between $325 million and $333 million.
Cadence, whose Q3 ended on Sept. 30, reported revenue of $216 million compared with $232 million in 2008. On a non-GAAP basis, earnings were 3 cents a share, while on a GAAP basis the company lost 5 cents per share. And Magma, which seems to have overcome its near-death experience (at least as far as its auditors predicted), posted revenue of $30 million for its fiscal Q2, ended Nov. 1, with GAAP earnings of 9 cents a share compared with a loss last year of 60 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings were 3 cents a share.
The picture presented by all the large EDA players is relatively flat, which is far better than in many other sectors. The companies that have done best—and the product areas within these companies that have fared best—are in areas where there is the most pain in the SoC development process. Private companies with tools that help reduce some of the complexity say they have been seeing solid growth throughout the past couple quarters.
On the non-financial side, Virage Logic shifted gears somewhat with its acquisition of ARC, moving into adaptive volume software, which keeps a consistent volume on computers and handsets. The feature is similar to what is offered by some television makers to keep the volume of commercials at the same level as regular programming. But while there are standards on television, there are none for other devices.
Atrenta won a deal with the Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center (STARC) to integrate its constraints SDC equivalence verification into STARC’s production flow. Early design closure becomes more important at each new process node.
Intel stepped up its pressure on ARM, rolling out a developer kit for future netbook applications based upon its Atom processor. For the past couple months Intel has been making vague mention of an applications store to go along with the Atom, beginning next year, starting first with netbooks and then extending beyond netbooks to mobile devices such as smart phones and mobile Internet devices. Vendors will have their own storefronts in this mega department store, but how that works and whether it will be successful remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be the first time a company stole a good idea from Apple and made a bundle off it.
TSMC is jumping into the automotive-grade semi world with a fab in Shanghai. While that may seem rather odd for TSMC—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.—it’s a tacit recognition of where the majority of cars will be built and sold over the next decade.
Actel extended its popular 8051 core into the world of high-reliability aerospace applications, where cosmic radiation can wreak all sorts of havoc on chips. The big advantage of the strategy is that it leverages a much broader ecosystem than is normally available for military applications.
Tags: Actel, Atrenta, Cadence, Magma, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Virage Logic