editor's blog
Subscribe Now

And Then There Were Three

Back before the turn of the century, a brash new company called Magma came onto the scene. This was a time when chip design involved a series of complicated tools, each of which required an exporting of the result of one tool and an importing of those results into the next tool. Magma’s claim to fame was the single database, with each tool providing a different view into and operations on that database.

Implicit in such a strategy is a goal of being all things to all customers. No non-Magma point tools would work with Magma’s proprietary database. That’s a good thing and a bad thing: it helps keep customers locked in, but it also means that you have to be the best at everything (or damn close to it). That last bit is a tall order.

When being all things became unwieldy, they stepped back and re-evaluated things. In my conversation a couple years ago with Magma CEO Rajeev Madhavan, he indicated that he was in the process of resetting expectations within the company: if a Magma tool didn’t excel, then they wouldn’t offer it. A full flow was no longer important, and they wouldn’t waste energy on something that wasn’t awesome. You’ve heard of companies wanting to be in the top three of anything they built; Rajeev wanted to be #1. Period.

It was all about getting back to leanness and meanness and rediscovering a start-up culture. And it followed on the heels of a painful lawsuit by the relative giant Synopsys, a process that, by Magma’s admission, sapped energy and resources from development activities.

We had that conversation in a dark time for the company, when the stock was bumbling along just over $1 per share, down from a peak of almost $30 just after their IPO (with the hot ticker symbol LAVA). The question being whispered was whether the company would survive. Since then it has recovered to over $5 – a reasonable multiple for anyone that got in at the bottom, but still far from earlier heady days.

Today it was announced that erstwhile nemesis Synopsys will acquire Magma for $7.35/share – a neat little premium over today’s close of $5.72. Rumors had circulated now and again over the last year or two that Synopsys was waiting in the wings to get a low price. Who knows whether today’s strike price is considered high or low, but it’s likely that everyone can walk away with something to show for it.

At this point there’s no official news on the fate of personnel and products.

And so the Big Three (plus Magma) whittle down to simply the Big Three: Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor.

 

(With apologies to Genesis)

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Jul 11, 2025
Can you help me track down the source of the poem titled 'The African Tigger is Fading Away'?...

Libby's Lab

Libby's Lab - Scopes out Littelfuse C&K Aerospace AeroSplice Connectors

Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Littelfuse

Join Libby and Demo in this episode of “Libby’s Lab” as they explore the Littelfuse C&K Aerospace Aerosplice Connectors, available at Mouser.com! These connectors are ideal for high-reliability easy-to-use wire-to-wire connections in aerospace applications. Keep your circuits charged and your ideas sparking!

Click here for more information

featured paper

AI-based Defect Detection System that is Both High Performance and Highly Accurate Implemented in Low-cost, Low-power FPGAs

Sponsored by Altera

Learn how MAX® 10 FPGAs enable real-time, high-accuracy AI-based defect detection at the industrial edge without a GPU. This white paper explores a production-proven solution that delivers 24× higher accuracy, 488× lower latency, and 20× lower power than traditional approaches, with a compact footprint ideal for embedded vision systems.

Click to read more

featured chalk talk

STM32 Security for IoT
Today’s modern embedded systems face a range of security risks that can stem from a variety of different sources including insecure communication protocols, hardware vulnerabilities, and physical tampering. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Thierry Crespo from STMicroelectronics explore the biggest security challenges facing embedded designers today, the benefits of the STM32 Trust platform, and why the STM32Trust TEE Secure Manager is an IoT security game changer.
Aug 20, 2024
39,962 views