MANHASSET, N.Y. — Syntricity Inc. is planning a significant update of its DataConductor analysis software that will expand the tool's reach beyond the semiconductor industry to include test and measurement for electronic systems. The company claims it already has sold licenses for several hundred seats of the package to chip makers, with as much as a third of its business coming from users of its online version.
In its current form, DataConductor can track as many as 100 different metrics for semiconductors in any post-design stage, from wafer fabrication through to final packaging, generating a wide variety of analytical views and HTML-based user reports of the data. The tool is geared to help chip makers improve yields and time-to-market delivery of components as they pass through the semiconductor supply chain.
Streamlining the back end
"EDA companies claim they are offering design-for-manufacturing tools, but they are still not there yet," said Jeff Teza, chairman and chief executive of Syntricity (San Diego). And while many companies focus on offering tools to automate the front end of design, too few have concentrated on delivering software that streamlines the back-end process that typically involves multiple teams from multiple design, foundry, test and packaging companies working in different countries, he added.
"It's more of a challenge managing the process after the design work is done in terms of the variety of issues engineers face and the number of people they need to work with," Teza said.
The company's customer list includes the Sun Microsystems Sparc group, Dallas Semiconductor, AMCC and Qualcomm, among others.
As many as a third of its users are tapping into the company's Web site using the tool that is running remotely on a data center run by a contractor for Syntricity. Those users include small companies without their own information technology department, users who have amassed large databases nearing a terabyte that want to outsource the processing and storage work, and new users evaluating the product.
The company charges about $70,000 annually for a four-user license to the online service, or about $300,000 for an entry-level license to the packaged software for 10 users running the package on their own network.
Syntricity's next big step forward will come at the end of the year when it rolls out its first major revision of the package.
The new version of DataConductor will feature three improvements. Data fields will be generalized, opening the door to a broader group of users that includes electronic systems developers. The package will also contain direct links to a number of enterprise resource-planning packages, including one from SAP.
In addition, the upgrade for DataConductor will support geographically distributed databases for the first time, offering a single view of multiple databases. The current package supports only a local cluster of databases.
"This is where we can really begin to leverage a lot of what companies like Oracle offer in terms of distributed databases and data mirroring," Teza said.
