CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
24 May 2004
Product News
New EDA Company Stelar Tools Optimizes Design and Simulation Resources for Re-design of Large, Complex Electronic Products
Stelar Tools, Inc., a Portland, Oregon-based start-up, announced it has received seed funding to develop electronic design automation (EDA) products that optimize design and simulation resources for ASIC, SoC and FPGA designers who are creating complex electronic products containing new and existing IP and testbenches. With patent-pending technology, Stelar will offer these designers a graphical and textual environment for exploring, navigating, analyzing, documenting, and modifying a design within their current design methodology using their current tools.
Stelar has secured seed funding from three Portland, Oregon-based venture funds including Capybara Ventures ( http://www.capybaraventures.com/ ), Northwest Technology Ventures ( http://www.nwtechventures.com/ ), and SmartForest Ventures ( http://www.smartforest.com/ ). Stelar founders have also invested in the company. According to Eric Rosenfeld, managing partner of Capybara Ventures, this is the first time in his memory that three local venture firms have combined their resources to launch a promising local company. Gordon Hoffman, a managing director of Northwest Technology Ventures, agrees with Rosenfeld. Both men have been involved in the EDA industry for many years.
"This is one of the most exciting EDA start-ups we have seen in several years, not only because it is staffed by a group of EDA veterans, but also because its technology addresses a real design problem, the increasing complexity of large designs in a truly innovative way."
Stelar was founded by a team of EDA industry veterans and patent holding technologists with more than 110 combined years in the industry. The team includes CEO Joe Tanous, vice president of marketing Steve Sapiro, chief technology officer Larry Carner, chief financial officer Jack Winter, director of product marketing Mike Lottridge, and director of engineering Scott Bloom.
According to Tanous, "We launched Stelar to offer groundbreaking new technology to designers who are dissatisfied with the lack of pre-simulation analysis, interactive documentation, and verification capabilities in their EDA tools, and who don't want to change their HDL design methods each time they change tools. Stelar's HDL software technology enables designers to interactively correct designs in real-time and leverage their simulation resources."
FPGA, ASIC & SoC HDL designs are becoming increasingly large, complex, difficult to understand, and impossible to deliver on schedule. Many of these designs are re-engineered from existing designs, and they combine new, re-engineered, and imported IP. These challenges are compounded by the fact that design teams are large and in multiple locations. To address these challenges, engineers need interactive analysis tools that deal with designs that are works in progress where the IP is incomplete or missing and design teams need tools to help them understand, analyze, verify and manage their current product so that they can make the changes necessary to create a new product.
Design teams currently use simulation and design capture tools to analyze and understand large designs. However, using simulation tools to uncover design, syntax, and connectivity errors is expensive because simulation resources are limited. Schematic/block generation tools are also of limited value in that they only provide a low-level graphical view of the design, preventing designers from seeing the overall design architecture effectively.
The Stelar team has developed an effective and focused solution that addresses these issues for the re-design, analysis, re-engineering and management of large, complex designs. The company expects to introduce its first product in 6 to 9 months. The product is currently in beta.
Stelar is now recruiting for key engineering and marketing positions.
Founded in 2003, Stelar Tools, Inc. is a privately held company that delivers the first true graphical and textual design analysis environment for large, complex HDL designs, enabling designers to explore, navigate, analyze, document and modify a design within their current design methodology and tools. Further information about Stelar can be found at http://www.stelartools.com
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