A historically reliable source has told me an unconfirmed rumor that Cadence
is quietly in talks to acquire CommandCAD, a little known DFM start-up that
sells a layout thingy called "Eclair".  It supposedly does OPC optimization
quicker somehow via a "proprietary pattern matching technology" which they
claim is "10x faster".  (Faster than what, I can't find.)  I've also heard
that binning was somewhow involved with Eclair, too.

As a company, CommandCAD is run by Martin Lefebvre (the ex-CEO of Cadabra)
and Kurt Keutzer (a well known ex-Synopsys R&D brainiac now at UC Berkeley).

The funny thing about this rumored acquisition is that Cadence Marketing
might be trying to keep this one quiet for two big reasons:

   1.) The first reason is that any such Cadence DFM acquisitions makes
       their CEO Mike Fister look bad because he's trying to foster the
       image that Cadence is a new & improved R&D house -- not in it's old
       when-the-going-gets-tough,-the-tough-go-shopping habits.  This why
       Cadence Marketing was so super quiet about their $25.8 million
       Praesagus DFM acquisition.  If EDN Mike Santarini hadn't snooped
       that story out back in May 2006, we would have never heard a peep
       about it at all!  See http://www.edn.com/article/CA6336198.html
       Cadence doesn't want to admit to buying any start-ups now.

   2.) The second reason is that Cadence has been really quiet about the
       DFM front overall.  Wall Street doesn't like this.  Other than
       the Brion and ClearShape "partnerships" CDNS announced last October,
       2006, they've done very little.  This means they're buying their
       way in -- i.e. they're in catch-up mode and that Cadence knows they
       need to play in this DFM market against Mentor and Synopsys.

I wonder, once it's done (and if it's done) if Cadence is going to keep this
rumored CommandCAD acquisition quiet (a la Praesagus) and try to pass it off
that its their own internal DFM developement -- or if Cadence is going to
officially announce it as something DFM they bought.

Either way, it'll be fun to see which approach Cadence Marketing takes.

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Monday, May 14th -- 4 days after this orginal Wiretap went up and now both
Mike Santarini of EDN and Richard Goering of EE Times report that Cadence has
told them that yes, Cadence did acquire CommandCAD with a statement:

  "We can confirm that Cadence has acquired CommandCAD.  They have some
   interesting technology that is complementary to ongoing DFM solutions
   being developed at Cadence.  We will not be providing any further
   details right now, but will update as and when there is more to report."

In their write-ups, Mike speculated about how difficult it will be to find
out how much Cadence paid for CommandCAD; and Goering wrote about the
backgrounds of the engineers who founded CommandCAD.

My thanks go to the anonymous source on this one.  Keep up the good work!

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MON, MAY 21ST, 8:47 PM -- From a source who's been accurate in the past:

  Hi, John,

  Congrats on the Cadence/CommandCAD call.  The only thing I heard that
  you missed was it went for under $5 million.

  With respects to the Cadence/ClearShape chatter, the number(s) that I
  hear kicked around are in the $100 million range.

  Keep me anonymous.

This $100 million figure seems interesting because it's in the same range
as the recently rumored Mentor/Sierra merger.  It's like everyone's handing
out $100 million dollar bills now for the serious acquisitions.