SASKATOON, CANADA - August 27, 2007 - Solido Design Automation today announced second round financing of $6.5 million, bringing total funding in the company to $9 million. The funding will be used to help accelerate the development and deployment of Solido's transistor-level statistical design and verification software technology, which aims to ensure robust analog/mixed-signal, custom digital, and memory integrated circuit (IC) designs.
Golden Opportunities Fund led a syndicate of investors including BDC Venture Capital, Victoria Park Capital, and private investors. Ulrich Felbermayr, Senior Investment Manager with Golden Opportunities Fund, was welcomed as a member of the Board of Directors. Golden Opportunities made their initial investment along with participation from all existing investors, including Investment Saskatchewan, through its investment advisor, Victoria Park Capital, and BDC Venture Capital.
Amit Gupta, Solido cofounder and CEO, said that the Solido technology fills a long-term gap in automated design tools for analog and custom IC designers, and ensures that nanometer designs work despite wide variations within a given manufacturing process. "Our solution complements traditional Monte Carlo analysis, which is the only analysis that's been available to analog and custom IC designers for years," said Mr. Gupta.
According to Mary Olsson, vice president at GarySmith EDA (Santa Clara, Calif.), Monte Carlo analysis is inadequate for analog and mixed-signal designers who are designing products in applications built around systems on a chip (SoCs). "Analog and custom IC designers are seeing the effects of sub-90-nm process variations that are affecting yield loss, poor performance, greater power consumption, and larger die area. Designs are failing, which is complicating the detection of transistor failures."
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, analog products - the market Solido serves - was one of the fastest-growing segments in 2006, growing 17.3% to $37.4 billion; forecasts project growth to $48.6 billion by 2009, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.1%. Growth is driven by strong demand from wireless communications, industrial and medical equipment applications.
The new Solido patent-pending technology incorporates statistical sampling, tradeoff analysis, circuit characterization, and circuit enhancement to discover problems and explore opportunities to compensate for those problems. Included in the Solido solution are new statistical data mining and visualization algorithms that enable designers to identify areas of interest, efficiently explore the data, analyze and interpret it, and prepare reports.
Solido is integrating its technology into all industry-standard analog, mixed-signal, and custom design flows. Solido is currently working with customer partners and will announce its transistor-level statistical design and verification tool suite in the next few months.
Solido Design Automation Inc. provides transistor-level statistical design and verification software solutions for analog/mixed-signal, custom digital, and memory integrated circuits. Founded by serial analog entrepreneurs, the privately held company is headquartered in Saskatoon, Canada with sales offices in U.S.A., Japan and Europe. For further information, visit www.solidodesign.com or call 306-382-4100.
Golden Opportunities Fund is Saskatchewan's first and largest Provincial Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Fund with more than $100 million of assets under management. The Fund has invested in Saskatchewan growth companies across 10 different industry sectors, making a significant and positive impact on the future of Saskatchewan. For further information, visit www.goldenopportunities.ca
Victoria Park Capital, with over $640 million under management, is the largest private equity firm in Saskatchewan with a mandate to invest in and help build value in businesses which bring economic activity to the province and who require total financing greater than $3 million. For further information, visit www.victoriaparkcapital.com
BDC Venture Capital is a major venture capital investor in Canada, active at every stage of the company's development cycle, from seed through expansion, with a focus on technology-based businesses that have high growth potential and are positioned to become dominant players in their markets. BDC Venture Capital has been involved in venture capital since 1975, and has to date invested in more than 400 different companies. It currently manages approximately $550 million in venture capital assets invested in the areas of Life Sciences, Telecommunications, Information Technology, Advanced Technologies and Fund Investments. For more information, see www.bdc.ca
PR for Solido Design Automation - Cayenne Communication LLC
Michelle Clancy, 252-940-0981, michelle.clancy@cayennecom.com