Applied Wave Research, the US supplier of EDA tools for high frequency design, has acquired the Finnish firm APLAC Solutions.
A significant reason for the move is the major European foundries’ approved model sets for APLAC’s analogue and RF simulation and analysis software, something AWR’s tools lack.
“AWR has model sets for the major US and Asian foundries, and for GaAs, but not for silicon and SiGe in Europe,” said Chris Paris, director of European operations at AWR.
“APLAC came out of Nokia and the University of Helsinki, Nokia has a lot of sway over the foundries and insisted they provide model sets for APLAC,” he said.
For that reason the major area where AWR has struggled to compete with Agilent is in RF ICs, because designers need approved design kits from foundries such as Philips, STMicroelectronics and Infineon Technologies. Nokia has been able to insist these firms build models for APLAC’s tools.
There are also market pressures driving consolidation in the relatively small front-end RF and microwave EDA market.
Excluding 3D electromagnetic software, the industry is worth roughly $100m, and until recently five firms - Agilent EEsof, AWR, Ansoft, Eagleware, and APLAC – were competing for it.
“The market is too small to support five companies, especially when two of them have 90 per cent share between them,” said Paris. “The market was fairly ripe for consolidation.”
“Where I think the future is for companies like us and Agilent EEsof is in moving up the value chain. Because the front-end market is worth $100m, and the back-end market, which is laying out ICs, design verification, layout versus schematic, design rule checking, is worth $2bn,” Paris continued. “That’s where Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys are, so that’s the way we see our product moving in the IC market.”
www.appwave.com
www.aplac.com