Mentor, a Siemens business (acquired Solido Design Automation): The World’s Top CAD Software for Semiconductors
Using your cell phone, looking at the dashboard of your car, playing a video game – if you use technology, you are likely using computer chips designed using software from the Saskatchewan-based technology company, Solido Design Automation, which was acquired by Siemens Digital Industry group and is now part of Mentor’s Analog/Mixed-Signal (AMS) verification portfolio.
“From when you wake up in the morning to when you go to bed at night, you literally interact with devices that have used our software to make those devices, every day throughout the day.” shares cofounder Amit Gupta. “Cars, laptops, cloud, internet, all the chips inside on those devices – a portion of those chips were made with our software.”
In 2005, Gupta and cofounder Trent McConaghy started Solido Design Automation to provide software to the companies making the chips for electronics that we use in our everyday lives.
“One of the areas that was challenging was that chips were getting smaller. Manufacturing chips that worked and making sure the small chips had high functionality was important.”
In late 2017, the company was acquired by Siemens AG, the 175-year-old German-based multinational company for what was described as “the largest technology acquisition event in the history of Saskatchewan.”
With over 3,000 clients around the world, Solido offers real-time support in different time zones and languages. The team works the same hours as work days in India, California, Austin, Eastern US, Europe, Taiwan, and Japan.
This approach has been working. As Gupta relates, “Qualcomm has been a customer for the last 10 years. If you open up your iPhone, they make about five of 24 chips and they use our software to make those chips. They make those chips to consume less power so you have longer battery life. They are smaller so the iPhone is smaller. They are higher performance so your phone can do more. When they manufacture the chips, the yield is better so there is less failure.”
The Solido team is growing from 75 to over 100 employees and they credit a great deal of their success to their Saskatoon location, “We have access to great talent, loyal employees, federal and provincial grant programs, investment, a beautiful office space at reasonable cost, and a fantastic tech community dedicated to working together to enhance the technology scene in Saskatchewan.”
“We were recently recognized by Deloitte as being one of the top 50 fastest growing technology companies in Canada with 50% per year revenue growth over the last five years. The reason we’ve been able to do that is by building software products our customers need to make the next generation of devices,” shares Gupta.
“We have a plan to continue the growth trajectory over the next several years. We see ourselves being an important part of the success of Siemens products while continuing to build next-gen products and delivering those products to customers around the world.”
Solido, as part of Siemens AG, has significant plans to help establish Saskatoon as one of Siemens’ key research and development centres in the world. Siemens cited the city’s technology-friendly environment and world-class University as key factors in the acquisition.
The future looks bright for Solido and their contributions to the growth of our province.
Founders: Amit Gupta and Trent McConaghy
