> I just heard an unsubstantiated rumor that Blaze DFM and Aprio are merging
> with Blaze being the life raft.  (I'm running this story because the person
> who told me this has been an historically reliable source.)  This source
> hinted that Cadence might have been in on the bidding for Aprio because the
> older OPC tools that Cadence had bought from ASML are not catching on too
> well with the Cadence customers.  Got no news as to whether or not Synopsys
> or Mentor was involved in the bidding.  Impression I got from the source
> was this is a zero dollar bailout merger of Aprio; not one of those big
> money Brion buyouts of Aprio (i.e. if Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor were bidding,
> it was for small amounts, because Aprio chose the no money Blaze deal.)
> 
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/070218.html


From: Jacob Jacobsson <jacob=user domain=blaze-dfm bought mom>

Hi, John,

Well, no one is giving companies away for free, but other than that it looks
like you caught us red-handed with your Aprio rumor.  Now that we have
announced a letter of intent to merge, let me explain why we did this.

Aprio has production users for their OPC software, having sold it versus some
very entrenched competition.  This was an impressive accomplishment, but we
aren't doing this transaction to get into the OPC market.  What interested us
was the stuff inside of Aprio's OPC tool, which can give our optimization SW
with accurate litho contours.

The fact that Aprio technology is accurate enough to do OPC in a production
environment enables us to use it for electrical DFM, which requires a high
degree of accuracy.

This isn't something you can do with some jumped-up hot-spot checker like
other vendors are trying to do.

BTW John, I haven't seen other DFM companies sharing their silicon results
yet.  It isn't like you to let vendors slide like this -- why haven't you
been calling people out for lack of silicon proof?  DFM is all about the
silicon.

    - Jacob Jacobsson
      Blaze DFM, Inc.                            Sunnyvale, CA