Mentor Graphics Corporation was a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981, the company distributed products that assist in electronic design automation, simulation tools for analog mixed-signal design, VPN solutions, and fluid dynamics and heat transfer tools. The company leveraged Apollo Computer workstations to differentiate itself within the computer-aided engineering (CAE) market with its software and hardware.
Mentor Graphics was acquired by Siemens in 2017. The name was retired in 2021 and renamed Siemens EDA, a segment of Siemens Digital Industries Software.
History
Mentor Graphics was founded in 1981 by Tom Bruggere, Gerry Langeler, and Dave Moffenbeier, all formerly of Tektronix. The company raised $55 million in funding through an initial public offering in 1984.
Mentor initially wrote software that ran only in Apollo workstations.
When Mentor entered the CAE market the company had two technical differentiators: the first was the software Mentor, Valid, and Daisy each had software with different strengths and weaknesses. The second, was the hardware Mentor ran all programs on the Apollo workstation, while Daisy and Valid each built their own hardware. By the late 1980s, all EDA companies abandoned proprietary hardware in favor of workstations manufactured by companies such as Apollo and Sun Microsystems.
After a frenzied development, the IDEA 1000 product was introduced at the 1982 Design Automation Conference, though in a suite and not on the floor.
Mentor Graphics was purchased by Siemens in 2017. The name was retired in 2021 and renamed Siemens EDA, a segment of Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Acquisitions
Timeline
Related
In June 2008, Cadence Design Systems offered to acquire Mentor Graphics in a leveraged buyout. On 15 August 2008, Cadence withdrew this offer quoting an inability to raise the necessary capital and the unwillingness of Mentor Graphics' Board and management to discuss the offer. In February 2011, activist investor Carl Icahn offered to buy the company for about $1.86 billion in cash. In November 2016, Mentor Graphics announced that it was to be acquired by Siemens for $4.5 billion, at $37.25 per share, a 21% premium on Mentor's closing price on the previous Friday. The acquisition was completed in March 2017. Mentor Graphics started to operate as "Mentor, a Siemens Business". Under the terms of the acquisition, Mentor Graphics kept its headquarters in Wilsonville with workforce intact, and operated as an independent subsidiary. In January 2021, Mentor became a division of Siemens and was renamed as Siemens EDA.
Locations
Mentor product development was located in the US, Taiwan, Egypt, Poland, Hungary, Japan, France, Canada, Pakistan, UK, Armenia, India and Russia.
Products
Mentor offered the following tools:
Electronic design automation
Integrated circuit layout full-custom and schematic-driven layout (SDL) tools such as IC Station or Memory Builder, a first industry tool for rapid embedded memory design that helped to develop single- or dual-port RAMs (synchronous and asynchronous), as well as diffusion and metal read only memories (ROM) IC place and route tool: Aprisa IC Verification tools such as Calibre nmDRC, Calibre nmLVS, Calibre xRC, Calibre xACT 3D IC Design for Manufacturing tools such as Calibre LFD, Calibre YieldEnhancer, Calibre, and YieldAnalyzer Schematic capture editors for electronic schematics such as Xpedition Designer Layout and design tools for printed circuit boards with programs such as PADS, Xpedition Layout, HyperLynx and Valor NPI Falcon Framework, software application framework Component library management tools IP cores for ASIC and FPGA designs