Subject: Synopsys quietly gobbles up Gemini DA in apparent fire sale?

> Please keep me anonymous.  Do you know whatever happened to Gemini DA,
> the multi-threaded SPICE simulation company by Jim Solomon?  It also had
> several ex-Spectre (Cadence) folks.  Gemini made lot of noise last year.
> I heard that it was secretly acquired by Synopsys.  I tried going to the
> Gemini-DA.com web site, but it redirects me to Synopsys.com now.


On this tip, I did a little digging and found the following:

   - Gemini DA played in the same space Raul Camposano's Xoomsys played
     in, namely distributed SPICE simulation.  Raul left Synopsys as its
     CTO to become the CEO of Xoomsys in 2007.  After burning through an
     estimated $16M in funding, Xoomsys died in 2009 after only securing
     Elpida as its only sizable customer.  As far as I can tell, Xoomsys
     died without its assets ever being picked up by any of the Big Four.
     See http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/090610.html

   - The rumor mill says that Gemini followed a similar path as Xoomsys
     but with its assets being picked up by Synopsys at firesale pricing.
     Gossip cites that it must be firesale since SNPS never mentioned a
     peep about picking up Gemini anywhere.

Also, there's some doubt as to exactly what Synopsys R&D could do with the
Gemini distribution technology that doesn't already involve a massive
rewrite of the current Synopsys NanoSim or Avanti HSPICE tools.

Mind you this is all rumor and speculation.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA