News and New Products

Source: Xilinx to buy AccelChip

By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- EDN, 1/11/2006 4:46:00 PM

Xilinx is negotiating the purchase of EDA startup AccelChip Inc., a source close to the acquisition has told EDN .

A Xilinx spokesperson said the company does not comment on rumors, but EDN's source told EDN that the acquisition is a done deal and that Xilinx paid $21 million for AccelChip, roughly $5 million more than the $16 million in funding AccelChip has raised to date.

AccelChip came into prominence roughly three years ago, offering a MatLab-to-RTL DSP synthesis tool. Since then, the technology has gained popularity in both the FPGA and ASIC worlds for designs incorporating DSP. And because MatLab developer The MathWorks itself has stepped up its tool development and marketing in this design area, AccelChip expanded its software to support C++-to-RTL design.

Prior to the acquisition, AccelChip supported Xilinx devices and linked to Xilinx's ISE tools, but also supported competitor Altera's Stratix, Stratix GX, APEX II, and APEX 20K families.

Over the last year, Xilinx has stepped up its efforts in FPGA-based DSP design, supporting the design style in its Virtex-II Pro Platform FPGAs and Spartan-3 FPGAs. If the acquisition goes through, Xilinx would not be likely to continue offering AccelChip support for Altera devices.

A source said Xilinx had created a "skunk works" roughly two years ago to develop system-level tools, but the company recently dissolved that effort to work with third-party vendors including AccelChip and recently IPO'd firm Celoxica.

While Xilinx develops most of its EDA software in-house, it has also been known to acquire it. The company purchased Hier Design in 2004, Visual Software Solutions and formal-verification technology from French EDA firm Veriphia in 2000, and CPLD development-tool vendor Minc in the mid-1990s.

A spokesman from AccelChip was not immediately available for comment.