Cadence Comes Tumbling After

Cadence announced rather unimpressive Q2 results yesterday. Revenues of $329 million were higher than the market’s expectations and grew 15% sequentially but recorded a 16% year-on-year decrease.

KLA-Tencor and the Fate of the Semiconductor Capital Equipment Sector

KLA-Tencor (KLAC) is the world leader in yield management and process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries. We have been discussing the changes and consolidation attempts in the EDA and ATE industries so far, both in the semiconductor infrastructure category. Another industry that suffers some of their conditions is the semiconductor manufacturing equipment

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Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 7)

SM: Is TSMC making overtures to acquire you? JJ: You have to ask them that. I don’t think either party has an interest in that kind of setup today because we want to see how this plays out. It is not something we are talking about actively.

Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 6)

SM: How did you convince TSMC that your process works and that you should get paid for it? JJ: TSMC would not endorse something like this without verifying it was sustainable.

Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 5)

SM: How are you charging for your software? Are you competing for EDA dollars? JJ: We recently made an announcement with TSMC, and I think this is the way we will continue to do business.

Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 4)

SM: Can you talk about Blaze’s value proposition and business model? JJ: We change the way a process works from an insider’s point of view. You have certain manufacturing processes with certain leakage, power, and performance characteristics. We change those to something more favorable.

Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 3)

SM: What was your next move after Xilinx? JJ: I was eventually recruited to run a small fabless semiconductor company in the RFID space down in San Diego. My family did not follow me down there, so for a total of five years I was commuting.

Tackling EDA’s Broken Business Model: Blaze DFM CEO Jacob Jacobsson (Part 2)

SM: You have seen , I have been endlessly beating on Cadence and Synopsys on this issue. What has created this dynamic? Why is EDA so undervalued in general? JJ: When you sell software the cost of goods is almost zero. When I was working with semiconductors, we could always point back and say there

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