SpringSoft reintegrates itself, absorbing Novas

As of today, SpringSoft, the Taiwanese unseen wizard behind the US brands Novas and Silicon Canvass, will come out from behind the curtain, putting its name on its global range of EDA products. The change is more one of corporate organization than of strategy or technology, but it does reflect the changing realities of the chip design business.

Scott Sandler, formerly identified with Novas in the US and now president of SpringSoft USA and vice president of corporate marketing globally, described the change in those terms. He emphasized that the company’s product development strategy is essentially unchanged. It is still to stay technically and intimately involved in customers’ design experiences, and to derive from that involvement an understanding of where the pain points are in the design flow. "If you solve a problem at a real point of pain for users, you will attract the key partners, and have interoperability with the other parts of the flow," Sandler observed.

What has changed is that the formal organization now more accurately reflects the global nature of SpringSoft’s operation. With the financial acquisition of Novas in North America and Novaflow KK in Japan (currently under way) the company becomes a single 400-employee corporate entity with $200 million market capitalization, R/D facilities in Taiwan and the US, and with customer support organizations virtually everywhere in the world where chip design is done.

So where are they going with all this? Sandler pointed out two major trends that could provide hints. First, he said that the fastest growth in fabless semiconductor development is now in Asia, not the US. And second, there is what he described as a renaissance in custom design. Both of these trends will present opportunities for the company, with its Novas verification management tools, Fortelink verification hardware, Laker custom-design tools, and Nanovata routing technology, to address new challenges in the design process.