Synopsys Buys IP Vendor Kilopass

　　EDA and IP vendor Synopsys continued to build its intellectual property portfolio through acquisition, purchasing non-volatile memory IP vendor Kilopass for an undisclosed sum.

　　San Jose, Calif.-based Kilopass, founded in 2001, is a pioneer in one-time programmable non-volatile memory IP. Synopsys(Mountain View, Calif.) said the addition of Kilopass would compliment its existing non-volatile memory IP portfolio for automotive, IoT, industrial and mobile applications.

　　The deal marks the fourth significant IP vendor acquisition in the past three years for Synopsys, the second-leading provider of IP behind Arm Holdings. Synopsys acquired Sidesense Corp. last year and acquired both Silicon Vision and Elliptic Technologies in 2015.

　　Twenty-six of Kilopass's roughly 50 employees will join Synopsys as part of the acquisition, a spokeswoman for Synopsys said. Some of the remaining workers will move to a portion of Kilopass that the company spun off prior to the acquisition, the spokeswoman said.

　　Kilopass's anti-fuse based one-transistor and two-transistor bitcell non-volatile memory IP is available in a broad range of standard CMOS processes including 10nm and 7nm, optimized for fuse replacement, secure key storage, device ID, analog trim, and code storage. The IPs support ultra-low-power non-volatile memory requirements for code storage and include high-density NVM to reduce costs compared to ROM or embedded flash.

　　Synopsys said the Kilopass IP would compliment its existing DesignWare one-time and multiple-time programmable non-volatile memory IP with support for up to 4-Mbit one-time programmable instances in 180-nm to 7-nm process technologies.

　　Joachim Kunkel, general manager of the Solutions Group at Synopsys, said in a press statement that the combined IP portfolio "meets market demands for increased integration, higher densities, lower costs, better reliability and improved security."