> Towards the end of last week some users emailed me that TransEDA had shut
> it doors.  Also, if you go to the DAC web site, you'll see that TransEDA
> is not showing at DAC this year.  As I had predicted in DVcon 04 #7 and
> DVcon 05 #9, TransEDA was desperately fighting a losing battle against
> those "free" code coverage functions which were already built into the
> widely used VCS/NC-Sim/Modelsim simulators.
> 
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/060626.html

Earlier this week Peter Clarke reported that the French company Valiosys SA
(which owned the remains of TransEDA) had sold what was left over from
TransEDA to an entrepreneur named Stephen Scholefield.  Apparently TransEDA
will now be based in Budapest, Hungary and it plans to keep on supporting
its Verification Navigator and Assertain product lines.  Apparently the
Budapest office currently has a staff of 15 employees, but they plan to ramp
up to 50 employees within 2 years.  According to its web site, TransEDA is
now also in the outsourcing business for embedded SW development.

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> THE BLOODBATH -- Ever since Cadence acquired First Encounter, there's been
> a slow but sure bloodbath in the floorplanning/estimating market.  Like
> poisoned fish, InTime, then Monterey, then AmmoCore all went belly up.
> And at the end of 2004, the CEO of Tera Systems suddenly and spontaneously
> left his Tera.  In this space ruled by FE, remains Icinergy, Tera Systems
> (still) and Silicon Dimensions Chip2Nite.  Tough neighborhood.
>
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac04-19.html

In addition, 2 weeks ago, Richard Goering reported that AmmoCore, which had
filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy last year is making a comeback.  Tom Katsioulas,
one of the original founders of AmmoCore, was at DAC talking up how he was
going to bring the company back but that Cadence somehow owned the rights to
what was left of AmmoCore.  I guess Tom's dream came true and he's getting
a second chance to revive his netlist-to-GDSII "Fabrix" product line which
"took synthesized netlists, partitioned the design into 'SBlocks' with up
to 10,000 standard cells each, and then optimized the placement of SBlocks
for timing and power."  From the article it was unclear if Fabrix itself was
coming back to life or if it was just going to be licensed to other EDA
vendors to resell.

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Both of these resurrections are extremely unusual.  EDA is NOT Hollywood.
Like chip design, it's very brutal and unforgiving.  Usually in EDA, when
you're dead, you're dead -- never to be seen nor heard from ever again...
It'll be interesting to see if these revivals last or not.  They'll be
breaking new ground if they do.