EDA firm CoWare has been boosted by signing a deal for its tools
to link with IMEC’s software defined radio programme.
CoWare’s ConvergenSC tool will be used as part of a
hardware/software co-design system.
"Right now we’re moving into an era where system-on-chip
contains tens or hundreds of processors, and this is how you design
your system," Rudy Lauwereins, a v-p at IMEC, told Electronics
Weekly.
"The letter of intent with CoWare is to make sure research tools
and commercial tools fit together," said Lauwereins.
IMEC’s M4 programme aims to develop a software defined radio
for both the baseband and front-end of mobile handsets and for
multi-format multimedia codecs.
Commercial products are expected by 2009, and the first strategic
partner on the project is Samsung. Other mobile handset makers are
expected to join the programme in the future.
Alan Naumann, president and CEO of CoWare, said: "We’ll
get some extensions to our capabilities. Wireless is where some of
the key research is going on in the consumer space."
CoWare, which was itself spun-out of IMEC some five years ago, has
made significant gains in recent years. With growth last year of 55
per cent, it has become a top ten EDA firm. Naumann claimed it is
now the sixth largest EDA company.
"CoWare has started to be more aggressive," Naumann told
EW at the DATE show this week. "We expect to keep growing
at the same rate this year – organic growth of more than 50
per cent."
He said CoWare reached profit on a quarterly basis for the first
time last year, so further funding is not required. "We plan to go
public, but we’re not rushing to it," he said.
www.coware.com
www.imec.be