Mentor Adds to Automotive Portfolio with Volcano Acquisition

Online staff -- Electronic News, 5/26/2005

Mentor Graphics Corp. has acquired Volcano Communications Technologies, including a complete product line of automotive network design tools, embedded software, and test and validation tools for the major automotive networks.

Mentor also has automotive electrical and electronic systems design tools in its product portfolio.

Volcano’s tools add real-time communications within automotive electrical systems to Mentor’s cabling and harness tools, embedded software and system modeling, the companies reported, with Mentor to continue offering and supporting all Volcano tools.

The tools are used in the design of in-vehicle networking systems by such companies as Audi, BMW, Daimler Chrysler, Volkswagen, Volvo, Ford, Fiat, PSA, Bosch, Delphi, Magneti Marelli, Siemens VDO and Visteon.

“This is a natural step forward for Volcano,” said Antal Rajnak, Volcano founder, vice chairman, and CTO/VP of R&D, in a statement. “We have been creating development tools and embedded software since 1998 but mainly focusing on the European marketplace. We are excited that, by joining Mentor Graphics, we will be expanding into the global automotive marketplace while combining our strong technologies into Mentor’s automotive design flow."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.