Siemens has entered into an agreement to acquire Austin, Texas-based Austemper Design Systems, a startup software company that offers analysis, auto-correction and simulation technology.
This technology allows customers to test and harden integrated circuit 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.
ICs in these applications require three types of functional safety verification:
- for systemic faults;
- malicious faults; and
- random hardware faults.
The acquisition of Austemper will strengthen Siemens’ product lifecycle management software suite, much like Siemens’ acquisition of Mentor did.
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.
Siemens says 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 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’ worldwide 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.
Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO of Siemens PLM Software, says: “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.
“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.”
The terms of the transaction are not disclosed. Siemens expects to close the transaction in July 2018.
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.
