In the Whatever-Happened-To-Them department, Dylan McGrath of EEdesign.com
yesterday reported that Magma had purchased the remaining assets ReShape.

My congrats go out to Jim Douglas, the CEO of ReShape.  He's proven he's a
class act during this crisis.  Instead of doing the shameful hiding thing,
when the question was publically asked by the users about what was really
going on at ReShape, Jim publically replied in ESNUG 450 #1 with the whole
truth of what ReShape was facing and doing.  No bullshit hiding; something
I greatly respect.

In stark contrast, during that same timeframe and with the same problems,
the Tera Systems management left the ESNUG user community with dead silence
when they faced the same situation in the user forum.

Dylan also found this Nobody Home response when he followed up:

  "Motti Beck, who was named CEO of Tera just last June, told EE Times
   Thursday that he has not been with Tera Systems since the end of 2005.
   Citing a confidentiality agreement, he declined to comment further on
   the status of the company. 

   Sequoia Capital, which led an $11 million round of venture funding
   for Tera in 2003, and VantagePoint Venture Partners, which led Tera's
   latest $14 million round of funding in April 2004, failed to return
   phone calls requesting information on Tera's status. 

   EE Times also attempted to contact other Tera Systems employees via
   direct lines, which generated busy signals."

After the Tera Systems MIA story broke, multiple readers emailed me that
Tera had definitely closed its doors.  A few days later, Mike Santarini at
EDN confirmed this.

In addition, Mike reported that the LSI RapidChip Structured ASIC group had
taken over the TeraForm source code.  What's interesting here is that then
2 months after that, LSI announced it was killing its RapidChip Structured
ASIC line -- which probably means the death of TeraForm, too.  (I have my
doubts about *any* source code that's been twice-orphaned over the period
of a few months finding foster parents in the commercial EDA world.)

Anyway, it's been 6 months since the Tera-is-dying rumor hit DeepChip, yet
the terasystems.com web site is *still* alive!  (Huh?)  Maybe IBM or NEC
(two other Tera early adopters) might take over the TeraForm source code now?
After all, the "growth partners" Frost & Sullivan named Tera Systems the
"2004 Semiconductor Entrepreneurial Company of the Year".  And to quote their
press release: "Frost & Sullivan rigorously researches nominated companies,
basing its awards on companies' demonstrated superior entrepreneurial abilty,
technological innovation and successful marketing."  :)