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25 Sep 2024
Industrial software giant forced to sell its Optical Solutions Group to obtain regulatory approval for pending Ansys merger.
Engineering design and simulation software specialist Synopsys has agreed to sell its optical division to Keysight, as a condition of a pending $35 billion mega-merger that will see the Silicon Valley firm join forces with rival Ansys.
The Keysight deal, for an undisclosed sum, will include well-known optical software products such as CODE V for imaging systems design, LightTools for illumination design software, and LucidShape - used in automotive lighting design.
Other offerings include RSoft Photonic Device Tools, and the recently announced ImSym - said to be a groundbreaking virtual prototyping platform for imaging systems.
Meanwhile Ansys has its own highly regarded optical design software offering in the form of Zemax, one of the most recognizable names in the field and used to design critical systems for no less than the James Webb Space Telescope.
RSoft and ORA
Synopsys acquired much of its optics and photonics expertise through a series of deals completed more than a decade ago, for example the 2012 acquisition of the New York-based RSoft Design Group.
That had followed its 2010 acquisition of Optical Research Associates (ORA), where the widely used CODE V and LightTools products originated.
Synopsys said that the sale of its Optical Solutions Group (OSG) remains subject to review by regulatory authorities and the completion of the Ansys deal - currently scheduled for the first half of 2025.
“The sale of OSG was determined to be a necessary step towards obtaining regulatory approval of and successfully closing Synopsys' proposed acquisition of Ansys,” admitted the firm.
Ravi Subramanian, general manager of the Systems Design Group at Synopsys, added: “We are proud of Synopsys' Optical Solutions Group, which has developed leading optical design tools backed by an expert team of optical engineers and scientists.
“Keysight will be an excellent future steward for this team, and customers worldwide will benefit from continued, strong competition in the development and delivery of optical design solutions.”
Keysight
Headquartered in Santa Rosa, just north of San Francisco, Keysight sells a variety of design, emulation, and testing products, ranging from oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and power supplies, to circuit design and simulation software.
On the agreement to acquire the Synopsys division Niels Faché, VP and general manager of the firm’s design engineering software unit, said: “Given the increasing complexity of electronics design, Keysight is excited to expand its software simulation portfolio with the acquisition of Synopsys’ Optical Solutions Group.
“This acquisition will give us the capabilities to enable high-performance system use cases beyond electronics, including optics and photonics. We look forward to welcoming the business’ employees to Keysight when the transaction closes and working with them to address customers’ critical design challenges requiring multi-physics simulations to predict product performance.”
Keysight expects the addition to broaden its existing software portfolio, building on its core expertise in radio-frequency and microwave electronic design automation, and physics-based computer-aided engineering capabilities.
PIC design acceleration
• In related news Ansys says that its collaboration with Microsoft and the chip foundry TSMC can speed up the simulation and analysis of silicon photonic components by more than a factor of ten.
"Together, the companies achieved over 10x speed-up of Ansys Lumerical FDTD photonics simulation via Microsoft Azure NC A100v4-series virtual machines, powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing running on Azure AI infrastructure," Ansys announced.
John Lee, VP and general manager of the firm's semiconductor, electronics, and optics business unit, added: "Ansys has developed unique capabilities that can be closely coupled with our leading multiphysics simulation engines for photonics.
"Collaborating with TSMC and Microsoft has accelerated technologies that address high-speed optical data transfer, which is one of the most important chip design challenges today."
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