Mounir Hahad Rejoins Silvaco

Mounir Hahad Rejoins Silvaco
by Paul McLellan on 02-20-2014 at 4:16 pm

Mounir Hahad just joined Silvaco as VP engineering. And when I say joined I really mean rejoined. I had a call with him to find out how that happened.

Mounir studied in France for a PhD in computer science on numerical computing. In 1995 the then-director of TCAD at Silvaco called him up having read some of his published papers. Silvaco… Read More


Before SPICE Circuit Simulation Comes TCAD Tools

Before SPICE Circuit Simulation Comes TCAD Tools
by Daniel Payne on 02-20-2014 at 3:19 pm

I’ve run SPICE circuit simulators since the 1970’s and they use transistor models where the device parameters are provided by the foundry. These transistor and interconnect parameters come from an engineer at the foundry who has characterized silicon with actual measurements or by running a TCAD (Technology CAD)… Read More


SPICE Circuit Simulator Gets a Jolt

SPICE Circuit Simulator Gets a Jolt
by Daniel Payne on 01-25-2014 at 11:28 am

I’ve been using SPICE circuit simulators since 1978, both internally and commercially developed, and a lot has changed since the early days where netlists were simulated in batch mode on time-share mainframes. We used to wait overnight for our simulations to complete, and in the morning had to pickup our output results … Read More


The Biggest Private EDA Company

The Biggest Private EDA Company
by Paul McLellan on 10-21-2013 at 5:02 pm

I talked this morning with fellow Brit David Halliday. More importantly, he is CEO of Silvaco, which he thinks must be the biggest private EDA company in the world. He didn’t reveal their revenue numbers but they have around 250-300 people and are profitable so you can make your own estimate.

David became CEO when Ivan Pesic,… Read More


A Brief History of Silvaco

A Brief History of Silvaco
by Daniel Nenni on 09-23-2013 at 5:00 pm

Silvaco is the leading supplier of TCAD software, and a major supplier of EDA software for circuit simulation and design of analog, mixed-signal and RF integrated circuits.

The company was founded in 1984 by Dr. Ivan Pesic. The initial product, Utmost, quickly became the industry standard for parameter extraction, device characterization… Read More