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Why did Siemens EDA acquire Fractal Technologies?

By Amit Gupta

We are very excited to announce Siemens EDA’s acquisition of Fractal Technologies last week, adding Crossfire to the Solido portfolio of IP verification and characterization tools, accelerated with machine learning. 

Siemens acquired Solido in 2017, and we are enjoying our journey inside Siemens EDA of supporting a fast-growing user base of standard cell, memory, analog/RF and mixed-signal designers who are verifying their designs against growing process variability, and characterizing their libraries quickly and with high quality. We have increased our investments in our machine learning technology core to continue scaling the capability of our products based on customer needs, and our applications support team to focus on enabling user success, globally. We continue to be leaders in variation-aware design and verification space and are investing more to deliver more features and solutions to our customers for IP verification and characterization. 

A common theme we started hearing from our customers in the last couple of years is that IP validation is becoming an increasingly big pain point. IPs and libraries are getting more complex, there is much more IP being used in designs, and the sources of IP suppliers are increasing. For example, IP quality assurance checks are now taking up to 50% of library characterization time, to ensure .libs pass quality assurance checks not just as a standalone Liberty view, but also with other frontend and backend IP views encompassing the entire SoC design and verification flow. 

It was clear that Fractal Technologies’ Crossfire (now renamed as Solido Crosscheck) is the tool of choice for IP suppliers and consumers, to ensure the delivery and receipt of high quality of IP. Crosscheck fits nicely into our vision and complements the Solido Characterization Suite. With 11 years of R&D and a list of over 350 and growing checks to validate IP in-views and across views, Crosscheck is leader in the IP validation market benefiting the whole ecosystem of foundries, fabless, IP suppliers and IDM’s. Solido Crosscheck already has a large list of customers who depend on it for IP signoff, and checks are regularly added based on new issues that are encountered.  

We welcome the Crosscheck customers and the entire Fractal team, and look forward to having you continue the journey with Siemens EDA. The Fractal team are experts in the IP validation space, and can help users with their toughest IP quality issues. 

We invite our Siemens EDA customers to check out Crosscheck and discuss how we can help enable your high-quality IP. 

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/cicv/2021/05/25/why-did-siemens-eda-acquire-fractal-technologies/