EDA Mergers & Acquisitions Wiki Now Includes IP

When I started collecting my list of EDA mergers and acquisitions about 30 years ago, my objective was simply to determine the number of logos each EDA company owns. For that reason, I collected all the fish-eat-fish-eat-fish…. mergers and acquisitions, going way back to the very early days of EDA (even before it was called EDA). I represented these using indents. If an EDA company did not merge with or buy another company, they were not on my list. I tried to be very diligent over the years in keeping everything up-to-date.

For those interested in the present tallies of the big 3, I calculate that Cadence owns 109 logos, Mentor owns 113 logos and Synopsys owns 153 logos. No conclusions to be gleaned from this – just interesting numbers.

I did this as an individual – there is no official sanction for my list from any company or any organization. I can easily have missed mergers. Errors and omissions are mine, and mine alone.

In January, 2011, Daniel Payne suggested I put the list up on Semiwiki. Daniel posted it on 16 January 2011 (https://www.legacy.semiwiki.com/forum/showwiki.php?title=Semi+Wiki:EDA+Mergers+and+Acquisitions+Wiki) and it has had 38,388 views as of 9 July 2014 – making it, to my total surprise, the most-viewed post on Semiwiki. Daniel and I keep it up to date and we really appreciate your interest in it.

Since I started the list, EDA has changed (not surprisingly). The list has survived most of the changes. However, one change that has not been completely reflected in the list is the incorporation of IP into EDA. If established EDA companies (like Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys etc.) bought IP companies, these have been included (to the best of my knowledge). However, I have usually ignored IP mergers – especially when an IP company merged with or bought another IP company; such as the recent CEVA purchase of RivieraWaves.

Daniel and I have decided to now include IP companies in the list, so we have added CEVA-RivieraWaves. However, because of my past decision to ignore IP companies, the list may now be incomplete in this area.

We are therefore asking people who know about IP-IP mergers or IP acquisitions in the past to add them to our list if they are missing. It would be nice to make the list complete in this area.

Thank you – and keep enjoying the list.

P.S. I love the image I found – each fish carries its own baggage 🙂