Open-Silicon targets derivative IC market with SLE acquisition

MILPITAS, USA: Open-Silicon, Inc., a leading SoC design and semiconductor manufacturing company, announced the acquisition of Silicon Logic Engineering (SLE) to enhance the company’s derivative IC design capabilities. The SLE team, based in Eau Claire, Wis., joined Open-Silicon effective December 7, 2009.

As part of Open-Silicon, SLE will increase the front-end capabilities at the company for designing derivative ICs, which are increasingly in demand as semiconductor companies look to maximize the returns on their initial platform IC investments.

Previously, Open-Silicon announced successful completion of an NXP Semiconductor product development which went from spec to production, including software, within 13 months. To build the best fully custom ICs and derivatives, specific technology and market design knowledge is needed. Open-Silicon will continue using an existing network of industry-leading design services partners, combined with the SLE team, to offer customers the best fitting design solutions on the market.

SLE was founded in 1996 from senior engineers formerly with supercomputer company Cray Research. Over the past 13 years, Silicon Logic Engineering has provided the ASIC industry with architecture, RTL design, design verification, and physical design services and grown to a respected industry icon with a reputation as the premier design center for highly complex designs.

With an average of more than 20 years of engineering experience on designs up to 50M+ gates, SLE’s team brings extensive technical knowledge of the computing, networking, telecommunications and military/aerospace industries.

“Companies today are looking for ways to leverage their engineering investments. The SLE team, along with the existing Open-Silicon team, provides the capability to build the derivative IC designs our customers seek,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, CEO and president of Open-Silicon.

“With this merger, Open-Silicon has created one of the broadest partner ecosystems for IC development which includes multiple foundry, IP, and assembly/test partners to provide the best possible technologies for each IC.”