Founded by Dr. Ivan Pesic in 1984, the company is privately held and internally funded. It is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with fourteen offices worldwide. In 2003 Silvaco acquired Simucad Inc., a privately held company providing logic simulation EDA software. Silvaco re-launched the brand by spinning out its EDA product line in 2006 under the Simucad name. As of February 17, 2010, Simucad Design Automation and Silvaco Data Systems were merged back together forming Silvaco, Inc. In 2006, Silvaco sued Intel for misappropriation of trade secrets in the case of Silvaco Data Systems v. Intel Corp., however ultimately the judgment of the Court was in favor of Intel. In 2012, David Halliday was appointed CEO after the death of the company founder Ivan Pesic. In 2015, Silvaco appointed a new CEO, David Dutton. The company also acquired Invarian, Inc., a privately held company providing power integrity analysis software, and acquired Infiniscale SA, a privately held company in France providing variability analysis software. In 2016, Silvaco added semiconductor design IP to its portfolio with the acquisition of the privately held company IPextreme, Inc. Silvaco also entered into another new market segment with the acquisition of the privately held company edXact in France. The tools from edXact are used for analysis, reduction, and comparison of extracted parasitic netlists. In 2017, Silvaco acquired SoC Solutions, a privately held company providing semiconductor IP. In 2018, Silvaco acquired NanGate, a privately held company providing tools and services for creation, optimization, characterization, and validation of physical library IP. The company also announced a partnership with Purdue University and the Purdue Research Foundation for the commercialization of the NEMO tool suite, an atomistic nanoelectronics modeling and simulation tool. In 2019, Silvaco appointed Dr. Babak Taheri as new Chief Executive Officer.
Products
Silvaco delivers EDA and semiconductor TCAD software products and semiconductor design IP with support and engineering services. Worldwide customers include leading foundries, fabless semiconductor companies, OEMs, integrated semiconductor manufacturers, and universities.
TCAD Products
Process Simulation
Victory Process - 2D/3D process simulator
Device Simulation
Victory Device 2D/3D device simulator
Other tools
Virtual Wafer Fab - Emulation of wafer manufacturing to perform design-of-experiments and optimization.
EDA Products
The company supplies integrated EDA software in the areas of analog/mixed-signal/RF circuit simulation, custom IC CAD, interconnect modeling, and standard cell library development and characterization. SPICE modeling and analog & mixed-signal simulation
Utmost IV - Device characterization and SPICE modeling
Clever - Parasitic extractor for realistic 3D structures
Library Platform
Cello - Standard cell library creation, migration and optimization
Viola - Standard cell library and I/O cell characterization
Liberty Analyzer - Analysis and validation of timing, power, noise, and area data from characterization
SIP Products
The company markets a wide variety of design IP under its SIPware brand. In May 2019, the company announced that the semiconductor design IP of Samsung Foundry is now marketed, licensed, and supported through Silvaco. The initial offering of hard design IP from SF is for the 14 nm process node. The company also develops and markets standard cell library foundation IP for process nodes from 180 nm to below 14 nm. Categories of SIPware IP include:
