Cadence to Acquire Rambus PHY IP Assets

[TheLostSwede]

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Rambus Inc., a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Cadence to acquire the Rambus SerDes and memory interface PHY IP business. Rambus will retain its digital IP business, including memory and interface controllers and security IP. The expected technology asset purchase also brings Cadence proven and experienced PHY engineering teams in the United States, India and Canada, further expanding Cadence's domain-rich talent base.

"Memory and SerDes IP design and integration continues to be integral to the design of AI, data center and hyperscale applications, CPU architectures and networking devices, and the addition of the Rambus IP and seasoned team further accelerates Cadence's Intelligent System Design strategy, which drives design excellence," said Boyd Phelps, senior vice president and general manager of the IP Group at Cadence. "The acquisition of the Rambus PHY IP broadens Cadence's well-established enterprise IP portfolio and expands its reach across geographies and vertical markets, such as the aerospace and defense market, providing complete subsystem solutions that meet the demands of our worldwide customers."




"The accelerating momentum of AI and continued growth in the data center is driving ever-increasing demand for memory and security," said Sean Fan, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Rambus. "With this transaction, we will increase our focus on market-leading digital IP and chips and expand our roadmap of novel memory solutions to support the continued evolution of the data center and AI."

The transaction is expected to be immaterial to revenue and earnings this year for each company. It is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2023, subject to certain closing conditions.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Chrispy_]

Who are Cadence, and what have they contributed to the industry? A quick search says they've been around for 35 years but I've never heard of them.

I don't want to jump to conclusions but it's no secret Rambus are struggling to survive, is this a "blood in the water" moment for other patent trolls in the shark tank?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Who are Cadence, and what have they contributed to the industry? A quick search says they've been around for 35 years but I've never heard of them.

I don't want to jump to conclusions but it's no secret Rambus are struggling to survive, is this a "blood in the water" moment for other patent trolls in the shark tank?

Cadence is a company that sells IP for a vast amount of different parts, so if you're designing say an SoC, you might go to them and license their DDR4 memory controller or a USB 3.x host controller design, as it will save you time and most likely money in the long run, since you don't have to design those things inhouse.

Cadence is anything but a patent troll, since they develop a lot of their own IP. Let's call them the Arm of peripheral and memory IP, as anyone can license IP from them for use in their products. A lot of their IP is "drop in" ready, i.e. it has been verified to work with certain hardware designs from the likes of Arm.

On top of that, they do chip design, validation and analysis software and they own the Tensilica RISC based MCU IP, which is often found in low power co-processor that don't use Arm, Risc-V, 8051 or some other proprietary core.

It might not be a company that is covered a lot on TPU, for obvious reasons, since they only do IP, not any final "hard" products.

As for Rambus, I wish they would just be taken over by some other, friendlier company.

 

[Chrispy_]

Let's call them the Arm of peripheral and memory IP

That's the nugget I needed.

 

[Wirko]

It's surprising that Ꝛambus sold off the PHY (physical interfaces) part to Cādence but kept the memory controller part. Both parts are very closely connected in any physical implementation, and I'm sure also during development. Until now, both companies have been big in both. The PHY may be quite problematic for future development as it contains analog parts, and those don't like to scale down with newer nodes. At the same time, data rates keep growing so there must be incredibly complex tricks employed in the analog electronics to push data over wires, PCB tracks, substrates, interposers, sockets, solder pads, connectors, and everything else.

Here's just an overview diagram of DDR controller and PHY at Cadence:

 

[bonehead123]

Was the Ramblus patent troll division included in the sale, or can we look forward to more of their shenanigans now that they have moar $$ to spend on more lame-ass litigation ?

 

[xrli]

Who are Cadence, and what have they contributed to the industry? A quick search says they've been around for 35 years but I've never heard of them.

I don't want to jump to conclusions but it's no secret Rambus are struggling to survive, is this a "blood in the water" moment for other patent trolls in the shark tank?

Cadence also makes one of the most widely used (if not THE most used, I don't have the data) PCB design software suite in the industry, Allegro, OrCAD, and PSpice. A big proportion of all PCBs in the world were designed/simulated with Cadence software.

 

[chodaboy19]

RAMBUS... we still shudder at the name after all these years...

 

[Frick]

Cadence also makes one of the most widely used (if not THE most used, I don't have the data) PCB design software suite in the industry, Allegro, OrCAD, and PSpice. A big proportion of all PCBs in the world were designed/simulated with Cadence software.

Oohhh that Cadence? I thought they only made software.

 

[Wirko]

Cadence also makes one of the most widely used (if not THE most used, I don't have the data) PCB design software suite in the industry, Allegro, OrCAD, and PSpice. A big proportion of all PCBs in the world were designed/simulated with Cadence software.

Oh, and that OrCAD? Some things live forever. At least the names do. I used OrCAD for schematics and PCBs in my DOS days.