Cadence Design Systems and Hewlett-Packard announced an alliance on July 10, 2000, to jointly develop, market, and sell electronic design automation (EDA) solutions. The plan paired Cadence’s design software with HP platforms, while HP also intended to expand its use of Cadence tools in its own research and development. The announcement described planned work and expected benefits, not verified results.
What did Cadence and HP agree to do?
The announcement was dated July 10, 2000, in San Jose and Palo Alto; the contemporaneous EE Times report was published on July 17. The companies said they would combine their research and development capabilities to create EDA solutions for customers worldwide, and jointly market and sell those solutions.
The partnership had reciprocal roles: Cadence would provide design tools and support them on HP computing platforms, while HP would make Cadence a preferred EDA provider for its R&D groups and broaden internal use of the software.
What each company planned to contribute
Cadence: software, platform support, and engineering resources
- Adopt HP-UX as a preferred product-development and support platform and operating system.
- Support the HP-UX environment on Intel’s 64-bit IA-64 architecture, which the report describes as jointly developed by HP and Intel.
- Increase deployment of HP workstations and servers for verification and quality assurance.
- Provide engineering support so applications could be available for alpha, beta, and first-customer shipments on HP-UX and HP Precision Architecture (PA)-RISC at the same time as their first availability on other UNIX platforms.
HP: preferred-provider status and internal adoption
HP selected Cadence as a preferred EDA tools provider for its R&D organizations, with particular emphasis on Cadence SP&R. HP planned to spread SP&R and other Cadence design tools across its R&D groups worldwide, which worked on HP computing, printing, and digital-imaging products.
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What was Cadence SP&R?
In the report, SP&R is expanded as synthesis/place-and-route technology. Synthesis translates a design description into a gate-level implementation; place-and-route assigns components to locations and connects them to meet design constraints. These are steps in preparing an electronic design for implementation, and HP’s commitment specifically highlighted Cadence’s tools in this area.
How HP-UX, IA-64, and PA-RISC fit together
The announcement described two related platform plans, not a single architecture. IA-64 was Intel’s 64-bit architecture developed jointly with HP, and Cadence said it would support HP-UX on that architecture. Separately, Cadence planned to coordinate availability on HP-UX and HP’s PA-RISC platforms with first availability on other UNIX platforms for the stated alpha, beta, and first-customer shipment stages.
The report does not name workstation or server models, give a commercial price, or specify a product release date. Its simultaneous-availability language is a plan; it does not establish that every application ultimately shipped on those platforms at the same time.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the executives said—and what the report establishes
HP president and CEO Carly Fiorina described the intended goal: “Cadence and HP will work together to optimize solutions that meet the increasing engineering demands for greater performance and next-generation architectures.”
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Cadence president and CEO Ray Bingham framed the alliance as a broader business approach: “Customer satisfaction is what drives us also to go beyond products and create new business models and partnerships.”
Duane Zitzner, president of HP’s Computing Systems, said HP would broaden deployment of the tools: “With Cadence as a key provider, we will more broadly proliferate Cadence’s world class technology in support of the HP family of computing, printing, and digital imaging products.”
These statements record the executives’ rationale and expectations. The announcement provides no attributable statistic or measured result, and it does not independently verify later completion of the plans. It should therefore be read as a snapshot of a corporate alliance announced in 2000, not as evidence of demonstrated customer outcomes.
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