"This synergy is crucial for chip designs at 65nm and below, where lithographic effects are more numerous and complex. Designers who can tackle these effects early during the design phase, will ramp their chips to production faster than those who have to wait," said Richard Brashears, Corporate Vice President of manufacturing, modeling and implementation (MMI) at Cadence. "This will allow us to make litho-awareness pervasive throughout our design flow."

"We think there's a lot of momentum to be gained by integrating Clear Shape's predictive, manufacturing-OPC-tool independent, validated-in-silicon lithography capabilities into the Cadence DFM environment," said Atul Sharan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Clear Shape. "We've always believed that the combination of rule-based and model-based technologies is the future of DFM, and Cadence shares this belief. This synergy allows us to provide the industry leading support for the widest range of advanced IC designs."

Clear Shape's products are in the DFM qualification programs of major semiconductor foundries, used by the likes of AMD. Clear Shape's InShape technology was the first qualified TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 lithography process checker for all levels (transistor through interconnect) for devices at 65nm, 55nm and 45nm.

Rumors of the acquisition were first touted here
http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/070816.html