Cadence Allegro

Overview

Cadence China now has more than 400 employees, has two research and development centers in Beijing and Shanghai, and sales networks throughout the country. Cadence has successively established a high-speed system technology center and an enterprise service center in Shanghai to provide users with high-quality, effective professional design and outsourcing services. Cadence Beijing R&D Center is mainly responsible for the EDA software development tasks with the US headquarters, and strives to provide users with more complete design tools and full-process services. In 2003, Cadence Company spent a huge sum of US$50 million to invest in the Zhongguancun-Cadence Software College established in Beijing, aiming to cultivate more advanced design talents for integrated circuits and electronic systems for the Chinese electronics industry.

Design platform

The Cadence Allegro system interconnect platform enables collaborative design of high-performance interconnects across integrated circuits, packages, and PCBs. With the collaborative design approach of the application platform, engineers can quickly optimize the system interconnection between I/O buffers and across integrated circuits, packages, and PCBs. This method can avoid hardware rework and reduce hardware costs and shorten the design cycle. The constraint-driven Allegro process includes advanced features for design capture, signal integrity, and physical implementation. Because it is also supported by the Cadence Encounter and Virtuoso platforms, the Allegro collaborative design approach makes efficient design chain collaboration a reality.

On June 17, 2008, Cadence disclosed their acquisition plan submitted to the board of directors of Mentor Graphics, that is, the purchase of Mentor Graphics at a price of $16 per share in cash, with a total transaction value of $1.6 billion.

Cadence said its cash purchase price was 30% higher than the Mentor Graphics closing stock on June 16 (the last trading day of Cadence’s public proposal). It is also 59% higher than the common stock at the closing price of Mentor Graphics on May 2 (when Cadence submitted its proposal to Mentor). This price is also 46% higher than the average closing price of Mentor Graphics over the past 30 trading days.

In a June 17 letter to the Mentor Graphics board of directors, Cadence President and CEO Michael J. Fister recalled that he and Mentor Graphics President and CEO Walden C. Rhines initially talked about the merger of Cadence and Mentor Graphics on April 16, 2008. . However, he expressed disappointment because Rhines was also reluctant to conduct further negotiations.

In a news and analyst meeting on June 18, Fister said: "Mentor Graphics told us that as of the end of May they all wanted to remain independent and did not want to discuss our acquisition plan further because they refused to negotiate with us. So we decided to disclose our acquisition plan.

In his letter to Rhines, Fister explained the significance of this merger. He wrote: "We believe that the combination of Cadence and Mentor Graphics will provide customers with a broader and more comprehensive integrated product and technology portfolio, which can better Solve the various challenges customers encounter when developing next-generation products."

Fister added: "The merger of Cadence and Mentor Graphics will be able to concentrate our respective innovative talents, thereby providing a more comprehensive and cutting-edge solution and providing customers with a new level of customer experience. By working together, we will accelerate the speed of customer innovation And efficiency, to better meet the needs of customers to develop new products."

The realization of Cadence's proposal depends on whether a mutually acceptable merger agreement can be reached.

Mentor (headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon) has approximately 4,200 employees and has generated approximately $850 million in revenue in the past 12 months. Cadence’s revenue in 2007 was $1.61 billion.

Recently, Cadence has participated in many acquisitions. For example, in March 2008, Cadence acquired Chip Estimate, a developer of IC planning and IP multiplexing management tools. In August 2007, Cadence acquired Clear Shape Technologies, a developer of design for manufacturability (DFM) technology. A month ago, it acquired professional lithography company Invarium.

Fister said at the News and Analyst Conference: "In the past ten years, we have completed 36 different acquisitions. The challenges faced by these companies are the same. We have fully considered the needs of customer solutions and demonstrated How to achieve the effectiveness of production. There are many factors, which are also necessary. In a very difficult time for the customer environment, they are facing cost challenges. Merger is the best time." Qicheng Education.