Cadence buys chip design co Rocketick for $40m

The Israeli startup helps chip makers reduce time to market of new designs by up to 30%.

US company Cadence Design Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CDNS) has acquired Israeli startup Rocketick Technologies Ltd. Cadence said that Rocketick's technology speeds up its chip development capabilities several times over.

No financial details about the deal were disclosed but sources close to the deal say that Cadence could be paying up to $40 million.

Founded in 2008 by CEO Rocketick Inc. Uri Tal, CEO & VP R&D Rocketick Technologies Ltd. Tomer Ben-David and CTO Shay Mizrachi, who all served in the IDF 8200 Intelligence Unit, and based in Ramat Gan, Rocketick helps chip manufacturers reduce the overall time to market of new chip designs by up to 30%. Its flagship product, RocketSim, solves functional verification bottlenecks by complementing simulators with a multicore processor based co-simulator acceleration solution, offering over 10X faster simulations for highly complex designs. Investors in the company include Intel Capital and Nvidia.
Ben-David said, "Rocketick and Cadence serve market-leading customers whose exploding verification challenges are testing the limits of conventional simulators. Rocketick's technology has been proven to deliver as much as 30X faster simulation on very challenging designs at top tier system and semiconductor companies. We are very excited to join the Cadence team and look forward to providing even more benefit to customers through the tight integration of Rocketick's core engines with Cadence's overall verification solution."
Cadence SVP and general manager of the System & Verification Group and the Digital & Signoff Group Dr. Anirudh Devgan said, "Ensuring that SoC verification is completed on time within ever shrinking project schedules is driving the strong need to speed up the underlying logic simulation technology. Rocketick is the leading, established provider of parallel simulation technology. I look forward to welcoming the Rocketick team to Cadence as we accelerate our innovation in functional verification to solve our customers' most difficult challenges."
Rocketick's 25 employees in Israel will join Cadence's Israel R&D operations. Cadence has offices in Petah Tikva, Rosh Ha'ayin and Haifa. In 2005, Cadence acquired Israeli electronics design solutions company Verisity for $280 million.
Peregrine Ventures general partner and Incentive Incubator CEO Lior Shahory who accompanied Rocketick from the day it was established, said, "When we invested in Rocketick, most of Israel's venture capital funds did not want to take the risk involved in investing in the chip sector. Moreover, Rocketick aspired to provide a complex product with huge technological challenge. One of the factors, which led us to this investment, was the quality of the entrepreneurs, three modest but impressive chip professionals. Another factor which contributed to the investment was the support from Israel's Technological Incubators Program, which provides additional evidence to the key contribution of this program to the growth and development of Israel's technology industry."

http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-cadence-buys-chip-design-co-rocketick-for-40m-1001116678