Siemens acquires semiconductor startup Austemper Design Systems to strengthen it mentor integrated circuit (IC) design and verification technology 

Global technology powerhouse, Siemens, has acquired semiconductor startup, Austemper Design Systems, to strengthen it mentor integrated circuit (IC) design and verification technology for automotive, enhances ISO 26262 functional safety testing via Siemens’ digital twin offering. The acquisition builds upon Siemens’ digitalization strategy and investments in the IC market, enabling customers to realize innovation. The terms of the transaction are not disclosed. Siemens expects to close the transaction in July 2018.

The Austin, Texas-based Austemper Design Systems Inc., is a startup software company that offers analysis, auto-correction and simulation technology. Its technology allows customers to test and harden IC designs for functional safety in applications such as automotive, industrial and aerospace systems where functional safety and high reliability are mandatory for compliance to safety standards like ISO 26262.

Austemper was founded in March 2015 by Sanjay Pillay to address the need for a complete, automated, scalable safety engineering tool set, which he found to be lacking. In his various roles, Sanjay has championed and developed the advanced methodologies and flows to improve accuracy, productivity and predictability in ASIC development. Sanjay has 22 years of experience in Management and Engineering in Enterprise, Automotive, Consumer SoC development.  Prior to founding Austemper, he headed the world wide Enterprise SSD controller SoC development at HGST/STEC, where he also set up the Austin design center. Sanjay has also served as a functional safety consultant. Sanjay lead the SoC architecture and world wide SoC development organizations at Trident/NXP/Conexant delivering the most power efficient STB SoC.

ICs in these applications require three types of functional safety verification: for systemic faults, malicious faults and random hardware faults. Mentor’s existing Questa™ software is a leading technology for functional verification of systemic faults and provides solutions for verification of malicious faults for IC security. The software technology from Austemper adds state-of-the-art safety analysis, auto-correction and fault simulation technology to address random hardware faults – expanding on Mentor’s existing functional safety leadership offerings of the Tessent™ product suite and the Veloce™ platform to provide the most complete end-to-end solution.

Design teams at leading semiconductor and IP companies use Austemper’s innovative technology to analyze the registered-transfer level (RTL) code versions of their designs for faults and vulnerabilities. It can automatically correct and harden vulnerable areas, subsequently performing fault simulation to ensure the design is hardened and no longer susceptible to errors. Moreover, the Austemper technology performs simulation at orders of magnitude faster than competing solutions.

Siemens will integrate Austemper’s technology into Mentor’s IC verification portfolio as part of Siemens’ larger digitalization strategy, leveraging Siemens’ world-wide sales channel to make this world-class functional safety solution available to companies developing digital twins of safety-critical systems at the heart of autonomous vehicles, smart cities and industrial equipment in Factory 4.0.

“With this acquisition, we continue to build on our commitment to helping our customers quickly bring to market innovations in autonomous vehicles, smart factories and smart cities,” said Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO of Siemens PLM Software. “In all of these markets, customers need to innovate more nimbly, but it is imperative they also build these systems with the highest degree of safety in mind. The Austemper technology added to the Mentor IC portfolio, along with the Teamcenter portfolio and Polarion ALM software, will give customers the ability to develop and test digital twins of their systems for the highest degrees of functional safety before manufacture and deployment.”

Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, is a leading global provider of software solutions to drive the digital transformation of industry, creating new opportunities for manufacturers to realize innovation. With headquarters in Plano, Texas, and over 140,000 customers worldwide, Siemens PLM Software works with companies of all sizes to transform the way ideas come to life, the way products are realized, and the way products and assets in operation are used and understood.