Siemens Acquires Solido Design Automation

　　Siemens announced it agreed to buy Solido Design Automation, a Canadian provider of variation-aware design and characterization software to the semiconductor industry. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

　　The deal is the first acquisition in the EDA arena for Munich-based Siemens since it bought Mentor Graphics for $4.5 billion earlier this year. Solido will become part of Mentor's IC verification solutions division.

　　"We see a great opportunity to expand the reach of Solido's technology across our customer base," said  Ravi Subramanian, vice president and general manager of Mentor’s IC verification solutions division, in an interview with EE Times. In addition to continuing to support Solido's existing customers and bring Solido's machine learning-based design and characterization software to existing Mentor customers across its product lines, Mentor intends to package tools from both firms to target new customers, Subramanian said.

　　Solido is a venture-capital backed firm founded in 2005 in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Solido's Variation Designer IC design tool is used for variation-aware design of memory, analog/RF, and standard cells, while its characterization sweet offers fast and accurate library characterization tools that incorporate machine learning technology.

　　According to Amit Gupta, Solido's founder, president and CEO, Solido has been growing rapidly and has been featured for two consecutive years on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 list of the fastest growing tech firms.

　　"Becoming part of Mentor now is a tremendous opportunity for us to get broader adoption for our technolgy," Gupta told EE Times. "We are excited about getting the reach of Mentor's channel to get our products more broadly adopted in the market."

　　The deal provides a glimpse of what may be more aggressive movement on the merger and acquisition front under the Siemens umbrella. Mentor has traditionally been less active in M&A than its main rivals, Synopsys and Cadence Design. Subramanian said Siemens' ownership gives it both the commitment to EDA and the deeper pockets to "selectively pursue" acquisitions that make sense for growing Mentor's business.

　　"Siemens offers greater resources and the ability to pursue the right acquisitions with the right ROI," Subramanian said.

　　Solido and its roughly 65 employees, including Gupta, will be folded into Mentor. The company believes its location in Saskatchewan gives it access to a broad pool of talent. Mentor expects the deal to close early next month.