History
Source III was founded in 1980 to provide full custom and semicustom design services, making extensive use of gate array and standard cell design methodologies. During the first 6 years of its existence dozens of custom and semicustom design projects were completed for many large electronics companies.
In 1986 the company was restructured to provide not only design services, but to also develop and market design tools for ASIC and system designers. The ongoing involvement of Source III in the use of CAE design tools for designing ICs resulted in the development and introduction of its first product (VGEN) in 1987. Source III found a significant weak link in the design process offered by most CAE vendors in the area of simulation stimulus generation. Initially developed for internal use, VGEN provides a powerful, simulator independent, high-level language for the stimulus generation task.
The first customer installation of the VGEN compiler occurred in late 1987 and the product has evolved substantially over the past several years. Over 1000 design engineers have used VGEN to create, manage and document logic simulation stimulus files.
In 1990, Source III introduced its second product - VTRAN, a powerful vector translation utility which enables designers to move simulation stimulus files between different logic simulators while optionally performing various timing and state modifications. This product currently provides a link between over 30 different simulation tools.
In October of 1991, VCAP, a powerful simulation data comparison and analysis program was introduced. This program is designed to meet the need for verification of simulation results data. It also performs timing analysis on simulation results files producing reports on output min/max delays and pin behavior.
TEST, a link between simulation data results files or ATPG-produced files and physical device testers was introduced in late 1992. This software works with VTRAN to produce functional test programs for testers from simulation data files under complete user control.
Source III uses a combination of direct sales and OEM relationships to sell its products, with more emphasis on the OEM channels. Source III is actively persuing this business and currently has OEM relationships with the following companies:
| Synopsys (TetraMAX) | Writer IP / custom VTRAN |
| Cadence (Quickturn Design Systems) | Reader IP / custom VTRAN |
We have a distributor in Japan. Some of the companies currently using our tools are: Motorola, Broadcom, Honeywell, Intel, Marvell, Mentor, PMC Sierra, Siemens, Cisco Systems and many more.
The current focus of the company is providing CAE tools which aid the designer in the data-intensive aspects of design/simulation/test. This includes stimulus generation (VGEN), simulation data translation (VTRAN and test option), and simulation data verification/analysis (VCAP). All areas in which growing needs are not being met by the major CAE vendors.
