The Week In Review: Dec. 3
By Ed Sperling
Mentor Graphics bought all up most of the assets of CodeSourcery, the open-source GNU-based toolchains and services provider, moving the company squarely into the Linux world. This builds on the company’s acquisition last year of Embedded Alley, which makes runtime Linux. This moves Mentor well into the open source world, but even beyond that it positions the company particularly well for 3D stacking, where the company can flex its expertise in Linux, Android and RTOSes. Mentor did not disclose the purchase price.
Mentor also won a deal to build a verification environment for Infineon based on Mentor’s Questa platform.
Synopsys revenue for its fiscal Q4 was $375.5 million, up 1.5% from the same period in 2009. Net income was $25.4 million for the quarter, vs. $19.5 million in 2009. Put in perspective of the EDA industry this is very positive–particularly on the profit side–and the outlook for 2011 is even better.
The University of Cambridge in England has figured out what it claims is an economical way to replace copper interconnects with carbon nanotubes, which should allow for shrinkage of features well beyond 22nm. Companies such as Intel and IBM have suggested that nanostructures will be present in advanced designs beyond 22nm, although possibly not until 8nm. What makes this discovery interesting is the possibility of mass growing nanotubes at very low cost.
Tags: carbon nanotubes, CodeSourcery, IBM, infineon, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, University of Cambridge