Siemens acquires Avatar, expands EDA footprint with innovative Place and Route technology.

Acquisition expands Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, enhancing current integrated circuit design offerings with pioneering place and route software

·Avatar technology strengthens Siemens’ leadership in Design to Silicon with place and route for advanced node design

Siemens has signed an agreement to acquire Santa Clara, CA-based Avatar Integrated Systems Inc., a leading developer of place and route software for integrated circuit (IC) design. Avatar helps engineers optimize power, performance, and area (PPA) for complex chips with fewer resources. Siemens plans to add Avatar’s technology to the Xcelerator portfolio as part of Mentor’s IC suite of software, capitalizing on the growing segment of place and route. Avatar will be integrated with existing market-leading products from Mentor, a Siemens Business, including the Calibre® platform, Tessent™ software, and Catapult™ HLS software, to help customers develop solutions that address today's and tomorrow's design implementation challenges.

“Customers are accelerating their move to advanced process nodes. Navigating the increasing complexity is a crucial challenge,” said Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president, Mentor IC EDA, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Avatar's innovative software architecture, as well as a reputation for ease of use, helps customers overcome this complexity with advanced node place and route capability. The Avatar solution, backed by Siemens’ investment, will offer customers shorter time to design closure with better PPA results than existing competitive offerings. We welcome the Avatar team and community to Siemens."

At 7nm and below, detailed routing must be considered during placement. Avatar pioneered a detailed-route-centric architecture that has been built bottom-up on a unified in-memory data model, designed to enable all engines to access full design data and attributes at any time. This empowers each engine (placement, routing, timing, optimization, clock tree synthesis, etc.) to dynamically invoke other engines incrementally.

"Avatar's approach can lead to excellent correlation through all phases of place and route, with improved PPA results,” said Ping San Tzeng, Chief Technical Officer, Avatar Integrated Systems. "As a part of Siemens, Avatar can further develop this approach, accelerate R&D, and grow market share by leveraging a much larger pool of resources. We are proud of our technical achievements and well-known record for excellent customer support and look forward to enhancing these strengths as part of Siemens.”

Avatar’s products are built on technologies acquired from ATopTech Inc. in 2017. The product line includes Aprisa, a netlist-to-GDS full-function block-level physical implementation tool, and Apogee, a complete top-level prototyping, floor-planning and chip assembly tool. The industry's top semiconductor foundries have qualified Avatar's products for designs at established and advanced process nodes, such as 28nm and 7nm - with 6nm and 5nm currently under development.

Siemens’ acquisition of Avatar is expected to close in the second half of 2020. Terms of the transaction are not disclosed.

Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The Xcelerator portfolio helps companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation.

The details of the deal are: 

Sector: IT/ITeS

Announcement Date: 15th July 2020

Name of the client: Siemens Industry Software Inc.

Name of acquirer and description: Mentor Graphics Corporation | USA

Mentor Graphics Corporation a Siemens group entity is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions providing products consulting services and award-winning support for the world’s most successful electronic semiconductor and systems companies.

Seller Name and Description: Avatar Integrated Systems Inc. | USA

Avatar Integrated Systems Inc. (along with its subsidiaries across jurisdictions including AIS Design Automation Private Limited
 its Indian subsidiary) is a leading developer of place and route software for integrated circuit (IC) design. Avatar helps engineers optimize power performance and area (PPA) for complex chips with fewer resources

Deal description: Purchase of entire equity shareholding of Avatar Integrated Systems, Inc. (and its various subsidiaries across jurisdictions including its Indian subsidiary, AIS Design Automation Private Limited) by Siemens Industry Software Inc. (through Mentor Graphics Corporation).

Team members:  Core transaction team consisted of Niren Patel (Partner) and Shreya Mukherjee (Principal Associate), with assistance on diligence aspects from Murugaveni Pillai (Associate) and Shraddha Desai (Associate)

Role of firm: Acted as Indian Legal Counsel to Siemens Industry Software Inc. in its acquisition (through Mentor Graphics Corporation) of Avatar Integrated Systems, Inc. and its various subsidiaries (including subsidiary in India, AIS Design Automation Private Limited). We advised Siemens on (i) the diligence of the Indian subsidiary, AIS Design Automation Private Limited; (ii) Indian law aspects under the global share purchase agreement for acquisition of the Indian subsidiary; and (iii) on other India law aspects for the global share sale deal.