Slob,
Here is another growing area of AMD's products - Celebrates Growth and Success
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- As the year draws to a close, it's time to celebrate at MINC Incorporated (Colorado Springs, CO). 1997 marks MINC's tenth year serving the Electronic Design Automation (EDA)industry as a proven technology leader in synthesis and the only independent company designing fitters for Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs). In the late 80's, MINC's founders left Hewlett Packard with an idea for an easier way to design with PLDs. MINC became the first company to support device independent
design, automatic device selection and automatic multiple-device partitioning, enabling more cost-effective design. Today, a decade later, MINC is a profitable and growing international company providing support for over 6000 programmable logic devices from 19 manufacturers. And earlier this month, MINC announced that it acquired the assets of Synario Design Automation, Redmond, WA, further enhancing MINC's ability to offer a more complete, cost- effective
design environment, provide support for a greater number of programmable logic devices and allow MINC to gradually expand into a broader EDA company.
There is a strong sense of pride and loyalty among the employees at this privately held employee-owned company. "MINC has overcome incredible odds in an industry where not too many companies are around to celebrate their tenth anniversary" reflects Kevin Bush, vice president of marketing. "MINC's success is largely based on each employee's belief in MINC, our products and our team. In many ways, we're like family and we're proud to be long standing members of the EDA community."
Bob Jensen, MINC's CEO, believes the company also owes much of its success and growth to its customers, partners and members of the analyst and trade press communities. "As we celebrate this significant milestone, we look back and reflect over how far we've come in these ten years" says Mr. Jensen. "We want to express our sincere gratitude to the many people who have been, and continue to be, an important part of MINC's success. Now it's time to look
forward to the challenges and changes the next decade will bring. The future certainly looks bright, and we are excited for the many opportunities that lie ahead."
MINC's acquisition of Synario will indeed provide opportunities for MINC to play a more prominent role in the EDA community. Mr. Jensen views this acquisition as the natural next step for MINC. "MINC has been small, but profitable for most of its 10 year history. The company is now ready to grow at a much faster rate. We have amassed a team of experts in programmable logic design, one of the strongest in the industry, and have now increased our staffing resources by thirty-five percent. This foundation, combined with
commitments from our OEM partners, investments from IC vendors, and a
broadening of our product offerings, prepares us to build a well positioned
EDA company."
Humble Beginnings
Back in 1987, a group of design engineers working together at Hewlett Packard in Colorado Springs grew frustrated with the inherent limitations of software available for designing PLDs. Combining their collective expertise, practical experience and resources, they left HP to develop and offer easier- to-use and more powerful software for engineers such as themselves. Thus, MINC was born. Ironically, the five engineers initially set up shop in a portion of a veterinarian office, but quickly outgrew this "animal house" and eventually moved into a large, new office. Today, the 25,000 square foot facility at 6755 Earl Drive in Colorado Springs still serves as worldwide
headquarters for MINC's development, production, sales and marketing efforts.
First Product Offerings
MINC brought its original product to the marketplace in 1988.
PLDesigner(TM) was the first hierarchical PLD design language tool that offered device independent design, automatic device fitters, automatic device selection and automatic multi-device/multi-architecture partitioning. Today PLDesigner is still the only product that allows users to target different
devices and architectures from leading IC manufacturers and implement the design in more than one device if necessary.
Designers may not realize it, but if they are designing PLDs or CPLDs with software tools from the leading EDA vendors, they are most likely using software from MINC. In 1989, MINC introduced its first EDA OEM product -- Mentor Graphics' PLDSynthesis(TM). PLDSynthesis, sold worldwide by Mentor Graphics, builds upon MINC's PLDesigner by leveraging the power of Mentor Graphics' digital design environment.
Aaik Van der Poel, product marketing manager for Mentor Graphics
(Wilsonville, OR) reflects, "Mentor and MINC have enjoyed a very productive and pleasurable partnership over the years. A lot of energy and effort was invested in integrating the MINC tools into the Mentor environment, resulting in a robust and easy to use synthesis tool, PLDSynthesis. MINC and Mentor have always been interested in combining their relative strengths to develop products that meet the needs of design engineers."
Following its OEM with Mentor Graphics, MINC rapidly became the EDA standard for programmable logic design and introduced OEM products for Cadence, Cadnetix/Daisy, MicroSim, Teradyne, Sophia Systems, Valid Logic and VeriBest/Intergraph. MINC has outlasted many of its original OEMs and still licenses products to the others.
Strong IC Partnerships
In 1993, MINC and Advanced Micro Devices (now Vantis/AMD worked together to forge an important partnership. Vantis/AMD is the fifth largest US manufacturer of integrated circuits, and MINC took over development of the software for AMD's MACH family of devices. MINC and AMD introduced MACHXL 3.0 later the same year, replacing former versions of design software.
Early in 1995, MINC signed a sole-source, multi-year software development and fitter support agreement with Vantis/AMD. Under the terms of the agreement, MINC develops and enhances all logic compilation tools and functional fitters for Vantis/AMD's MACH and PLD product lines. In May 1997 Vantis/AMD showed its continued commitment to MINC's software development efforts when it invested additional funds in the company.
According to Frank Barone, Chief Operating Officer of Vantis, "MINC's unique relationships with third-party suppliers has proven extremely valuable to our long-term strategy. We congratulate MINC for 10 years of success and look forward to continuing our partnership to ensure that we provide the industry with the best programmable logic software solutions."
MINC also has development contracts with several other vendors including Atmel Corporation and Philips Semiconductor. Throughout its history, MINC has sustained close and confidential relationships with each of its partners to deliver individualized software while maintaining its independent status.
This year, in addition to focusing on building and maintaining strong OEM relationships, MINC is expanding its sales and marketing efforts to supply MINC software directly to end users. According to Mr. Jensen, "MINC has been extremely successful as an OEM company by seamlessly integrating its tools with nearly every leading EDA vendor and several IC manufacturers. In recent months we have stepped up our marketing efforts to bring MINC's products directly to end users as a way to further grow business and provide electronic engineers access to all leading programmable logic manufacturers with MINC's vendor independent tools. The acquisition of Synario further enhances our
ability to provide a complete solution to our customers."
Technology Expansion
In 1995 MINC acquired IST SARL (IST) in Grenoble, France. With the acquisition of IST, MINC became the only universal tool vendor in the industry with the ability to provide a comprehensive suite of design software for the entire programmable logic spectrum. The addition of IST gave MINC access to leading VHDL and Verilog HDL synthesis technologies, superior optimization for CPLDs and FPGAs and a strong European sales and technical support presence. Additionally, through the acquisition MINC became the software supplier for
Actel and Compass. The addition of Synario's front-end schematic capture and design manager as well as links to leading synthesis, simulation and PCB tools, will enable MINC to leverage its technology under Synario's framework to give users a broader product offering than it has in the past. According to Kevin Bush, the addition of Synario's capabilities will enhance MINC's ability to offer a more complete, cost-effective design environment, provide support for a
greater number of programmable logic devices and allow MINC to expand into a broader EDA company. "The needs of engineers designing such products as microprocessor boards, graphics cards and instruments have moved beyond point tools. While MINC has excelled at offering synthesis and place-and-route technology for programmable logic devices, we recognize the need to offer a reliable, high-quality systems solution, at a reasonable cost. Additionally, the combination of technology from MINC and Synario will provide users with access to nearly all leading programmable logic devices."
Finally, It's Easy
MINC continues to make inroads into the programmable logic design
community. Responding to the EDA industry's shift toward using Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) for synthesis and simulation in programmable logic design, MINC recently introduced a new release of its revolutionary new product -- VHDL Easy(TM). VHDL Easy 1.1 is a low cost, high performance programmable logic synthesis tool that allows users to leverage the power of VHDL -- one of the most popular HDLs -- in their designs.
VHDL Easy and optimization techniques used in workstation synthesis tools, yet costs only a fraction of currently available competitive tools. State-of-the-art techniques such as macro inference and resource sharing ensure maximum device utilization. VHDL Easy uses optimization and mapping designed specifically
for the selected device to minimize the amount of space needed in the final solution.
VHDL EASY SIM, is a comprehensive VHDL simulator supporting IEEE 1076 and VHDL 93 standards. Other features include a context sensitive VHDL editor, VHDL wizards which help build VHDL constructs, a comprehensive waveform display, and an intuitive graphical interface. VHDL EASY 1.1 is priced at $495, and VHDL EASY SIM can be added for an additional $495, providing a complete programmable logic design environment for under $1,000.
MINC Incorporated, located in Colorado Springs, CO, is committed to delivering tools which set a new standard of capability and performance for PLD, CPLD and FPGA design on UNIX, Windows '95 and Windows NT platforms. MINC's patented technology is also incorporated into the programmable logic design products offered for and by leading EDA manufacturers including Cadence Design Systems, Compass, Data I/O (Synario), Mentor Graphics, MicroSim Corporation, VeriBest and Viewlogic. MINC also has a marketing agreement with Synopsys. In addition to OEM relationships with EDA vendors, MINC is an OEM
supplier to IC companies including Actel, Vantis/AMD and Philips
Semiconductor. For more information, call 800/755-3742 or e-mail info@minc.com or visit the Web home page at "http://www.minc.com"
SOURCE MINC Incorporated
CONTACT: Kevin Bush of MINC, 719-590-1155, kevin@minc.com; or Carle
Churgin, 303-449-7688, churgin@aol.com, or Jennifer Sleek, 303-652-8853,
jsleek@compuserve.com, both of Churgin Communications
Web site: "http://www.minc.com/"
Best wishes
James |
