With continuous technological innovation and product development, why was this top three EDA company in the world acquired?

Sina Technology News Beijing time November 14 morning news, Reuters quoted sources as saying that Siemens is close to acquiring semiconductor design software manufacturer Mentor Graphics for $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion in cash .

The deal could be announced as early as Monday, the sources said. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

Mentor Graphics is facing pressure from activist hedge fund Elliott Management, which bought an 8.1 percent stake in Mentor Graphics in September and said the company's stock was severely undervalued.

Reuters reported last month that Mentor Graphics was working with Bank of America to consider strategic options, including a sale.

In September 2014, Siemens AG and Bosch Group reached an agreement: Robert Bosch will acquire 50% of the shares of Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group (BSH Home Appliances) held by Siemens in the joint venture. After the transaction is completed, BSH Home Appliances will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bosch Group, and Siemens will completely withdraw from the home appliance field. The sale of home appliance business is one of the manifestations of Siemens' strategy of focusing on electrification, automation and digitalization.

Development History

On October 1, 1847, Werner von Siemens founded a company based on his invention of telegraphy, which used a needle to indicate the sequence of letters instead of Morse code. The company was then called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske.

In 1848, the company built Europe's first long-distance telegraph line, spanning 500 kilometers from Berlin to Frankfurt.

In 1850, the founder's brother, Carl Wilhelm Siemens, opened a representative office in London. In the 1850s, the company participated in the construction of the Russian long-distance telegraph network.

In 1855, Carl Heinrich von Siemens, another brother of the founder, established a new branch in St. Petersburg. The company continued to grow and began to get involved in electric trains and light bulbs.

In 1890, the founder retired and left the company to his brother Karl Heinrich and his two sons Arnold von Siemens and Georg Wilhelm von Siemens.

In 1897, Siemens and Halske jointly founded the company S&H.

In 1919, S&H and two other companies jointly established the Osram Lightbulb Company.

In 1923, the Japanese branch was established.

During World War II

In the 1920s and 1930s, S&H began to produce radios, televisions and electron microscopes. Before World War II, S&H was involved in Germany's secret war preparations.

Between 1937 and 1938 (when the Japanese army carried out the Nanjing Massacre), John Rabe, manager of the Nanjing office of the German company Siemens, used his special identity as deputy minister of the Nanjing branch of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) to establish the Nanjing Wartime Safety Zone in Nanjing, China, and served as chairman of the Safety Zone Committee. He protected approximately 250,000 Chinese civilians and was known as the "Living Bodhisattva" and the "Chinese Schindler."

Post-war development

In the 1950s, S&H began producing computers, semiconductor devices, washing machines, and pacemakers.

In 1966, Siemens AG was founded.

In 1967, Siemens AG and Robert Bosch GmbH established BSH, a joint venture mainly engaged in the production of white goods, which later became a leader in the German and Western European home appliance markets.

In 1980, the company's first digital telephone exchange rolled off the production line.

In 1988, Siemens and General Electric acquired the British defense and technology company Plessey. Due to the split of Plessey's owners, Siemens took over its avionics, radar and traffic control parts and changed its name to Siemens Plessey.

1990s

In 1990, Siemens acquired the troubled Nixdorf computer company and renamed it Siemens Nixdorf Informations System AG. Under the leadership of Gerhar Schumeyer, the company began to make profits. In 1997, Siemens launched the first color screen GSM portable phone. Also in 1997, Siemens reached an agreement with British Aerospace and DASA to supply them with defense equipment produced by Siemens Plessey. British Aerospace and DASA were responsible for the procurement of military equipment for the United Kingdom and Germany respectively.

In 1999, Siemens' semiconductor business was spun off into a new company, Infineon Technologies AG. In the same year, Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems AG became part of Fujitsu Siemens Computers AG.

In 2004, Siemens Mobile launched the 65 series of mobile phones. The good user interface, user-friendly operation and practical functional design made the 65 series of mobile phones widely popular. However, due to software problems, Siemens Mobile had to recall the mobile phones, which laid the groundwork for the acquisition a year later.

In 2005, Taiwan's BenQ acquired Siemens's mobile phone company, which was in financial crisis, and obtained the exclusive right to use the Siemens trademark for five years, with the full name of BenQ-Siemens. Before transferring the mobile phone company to BenQ, Siemens invested 250 million euros and wrote off assets worth 100 million euros. Siemens also obtained 5% of BenQ's shares, which was worth about 50 million euros.

On October 30, 2006, Siemens announced the establishment of Siemens China Research Institute in Beijing. Siemens was involved in a huge bribery case, far exceeding 426 million euros, which led to the resignation of the current CEO Klaus Kleinfeld.

Entering China

1872: 25 years after its founding, Siemens began doing business with China in 1872. Siemens' first order in China was to provide pointer telegraphs to China, marking the beginning of China's modern telecommunications industry.

Siemens AG

1879: Siemens received an order for "lighting equipment" from the Chinese government. Siemens provided a 10-horsepower steam generator for lighting in Shanghai Port, which greatly improved the port's work efficiency. In a letter to his brother Karl on November 3, 1879, Werner von Siemens mentioned that he was very confident that China would soon order lighting equipment from Siemens.

1899: Due to the fear of fire, steam locomotives connecting Beijing and Tianjin were not allowed to pass through Beijing. Therefore, Siemens built China's first tram in Beijing. The tram track connected Majiapu outside Beijing and Hademen inside the city. In the same year, Siemens built China's first power plant in Beijing to provide electricity for urban lighting and tram tracks.

1904: The rapid expansion of business in China prompted Siemens to set up its first permanent office in Shanghai, which was an important milestone in Siemens' business in China.

1910: Siemens founded Siemens China Electrical Engineering Company, headquartered in Berlin and with a branch in Shanghai. In the next four years, Siemens expanded its business to Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Harbin, Hong Kong, Qingdao and Tianjin. In 1914, the company was renamed Siemens China Company (Shanghai). Siemens' business in China, especially in the power sector, developed rapidly in the early 20th century. Siemens expanded the Shijingshan Power Plant near Beijing.

1921: Siemens begins electrification of Zhongxing Coal Mine Company in Zaozhuang, Shandong Province, known as China's first modern mining project.

1937: During the Japanese invasion of China and the Nanjing Massacre, he established the International Safety Zone and served as chairman of the Safety Zone Committee, protecting approximately 250,000 Chinese.

1972: The Federal Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of China establish diplomatic relations. This historic event paves the way for Siemens and China to resume their traditional friendship and lays the foundation for the development and prosperity of future cooperation.

In 1972, a ward monitoring system manufactured by Siemens was given to China as a gift.

In December 1978, Siemens held the "Electrical and Electronic Technology Expo" in Shanghai for the first time. Peter von Siemens, then Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens and great-grandson of the company's founder Werner von Siemens, personally went to Shanghai and cut the ribbon for the Expo with Shanghai leaders. More than 39,000 industrial technical experts and guests visited the Expo with great enthusiasm.

1984: Siemens built the first high-voltage direct current transmission line for China. This transmission line can transmit 1,200 megawatts of electricity from the Gezhouba Hydropower Station, China's largest hydroelectric power station at the time, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to Shanghai, thousands of miles away. The project was completed in 1989, marking Siemens' great contribution to China's high-voltage direct current power transmission, and also demonstrating Siemens' expertise in installing high-tech equipment and the reliability of its products.

1985 was a milestone in the cooperation between Siemens and China. On October 29, 1985, the two sides signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation between Siemens and the People's Republic of China in the Fields of Mechanical Industry, Electrical Engineering and Electronics Industry in Beijing. Siemens was the first foreign company invited to conduct such in-depth cooperation with China.

In 1987, Siemens began exploring the possibility of establishing a joint venture with China. On October 31, 1988, Siemens reached an agreement to establish the first production enterprise in China to produce digital public telephone switching systems (EWSD). Subsequently, Beijing International Switching Systems Co., Ltd. (BISC) was established in November 1990 to meet China's growing demand for public telephone systems.

In 1988, Siemens decided to establish a joint venture to produce computed tomography (CT) systems. This agreement eventually led to the establishment of Siemens Medical Devices in 1992, the first CT production site established by Siemens outside of Germany.

In 1995, Siemens (China) Co., Ltd. established the first three regional offices of Siemens in China in Wuhan, Fuzhou and Guangzhou. Siemens established 13 operating companies in China in the same year. In July of the same year, the then Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Siemens' headquarters in Munich during his visit to Germany.

In 1996, Siemens launched the first Siemens mobile phone S4 produced in China to the Chinese market.

In October 1997, Siemens held a celebration for its 125-year partnership with China. During the celebration, Siemens Management Academy was established to provide employees with advanced management training, business and skills seminars, and vocational and business education training.

In 1998, China suffered a once-in-a-century flood. Siemens and its employees donated more than RMB 4.5 million to the victims to help them rebuild their homes.

In August 2001, Siemens successfully produced the first SOMATOM CT machine, which is the most compact and cost-effective CT device in the world. It was developed by Chinese researchers in cooperation with Siemens Medical Solutions R&D centers in Germany and the U.S. This advanced CT machine manufactured in China is aimed at both domestic and foreign markets.

In October 2006, Siemens China Research Institute was formally established in Beijing. This institute and Siemens American Research Institute have become the two largest and most important research bases of Siemens outside of Germany.

In 2007, the Shanghai World Expo Coordination Bureau and Siemens signed an agreement in Shanghai, and Siemens officially became the "Global Partner of Innovative Infrastructure and Healthcare for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo in China." This is the first multinational company to independently become the Global Partner of the Shanghai World Expo.

Siemens Center (Beijing) was officially opened on September 23, 2008. Located in the Wangjing area in the northeast of Beijing, Siemens Center (Beijing) includes a headquarters building with an area of ​​17,500 square meters and two five-story auxiliary buildings. This 30-story building with a height of 123 meters and a total investment of 100 million euros is one of Siemens' largest investment projects in the global real estate field.

In 2013, a Siemens spokesman said that as part of the company's 6 billion euro (about 8.1 billion US dollars) cost-cutting plan, the company will cut 15,000 jobs in the next year, of which one-third will be in Germany.

In September 2014, Siemens AG and Bosch Group reached an agreement: Robert Bosch will acquire Siemens' 50% stake in the joint venture Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group (BSH).

In fiscal year 2015 (October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015), Siemens' total operating revenue in China reached 6.94 billion euros and it had more than 32,000 employees.

Official website: www.mentor.com

Mentor Graphics, also known as Mentor, is a leading manufacturer of electronic design automation (EDA) technology. It provides complete software and hardware design solutions and is one of the world's three largest EDA companies. In addition to EDA tools, Mentor also has a lot of products that help automotive electronics manufacturers, including embedded software. Mentor's strategy is to continue to strengthen independent research and development in its main business, EDA tools, and invest 30% of its annual sales revenue as research funding. Among EDA tools, hardware simulators maintain an ultra-high growth rate of 24%.

develop

The company is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, has 3,950 employees worldwide and had revenue of $700 million in the past 12 months.

The China headquarters is located in the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai, with sales offices in Beijing and Shenzhen.

It has a world-class R&D department and 67 offices around the world.

We form strategic alliances with world-renowned electronic product manufacturers, suppliers and semiconductor manufacturers to develop new design solutions to serve modern high technology.

product

MentorGraphics currently has a variety of circuit board design tool software. Its high-end software includes: Mentor EE (EXP2007), Board Station. Multilayer board automatic wiring tool.

DxDesigner, HyperLynx schematic tool and circuit simulation tool.

Low-end and mid-range products include: PADS9.3 (DxDesigner , HyperLynx, PADSLogic9.3, PADSLayout9.3, PADSRouter9.3)

High-end software is mainly run in large service stations, mainly for military and large companies. (such as: Intel, IBM,)

Low-end and mid-range software is also widely used, including the world's top 500 companies (such as: JBC in the United States, Tanita in Japan, etc.) as well as domestic small and medium-sized enterprises and private enterprises.

Technological innovation

➤ Xpedition PCB design platform launched in 2014

MentorGraphics today announced the first phase of its new system design enterprise platform to address the challenges of increased design complexity, changing workforce structure and system-aware design requirements for printed circuit board (PCB) systems. The first new product to be released is Xpedition PCB layout technology. This new platform is designed to accelerate the adoption and deployment of new technologies.

With the increasing complexity of high-density circuit boards and the space limitations of multi-layer circuit board design, a design environment that can promote cross-domain collaboration within the enterprise has become a necessity. This platform is an easy-to-use, high-productivity design environment that provides automated device planning and placement, auto-assisted interactive routing, and a 3D design environment - even for designers or teams who are not familiar with complex PCB layout design.

➤ In October 2016, the Xpedition multi-board system for seamless multi-disciplinary collaboration was launched

MentorGraphics today announced the launch of the new Xpedition® multi-board system design solution to help multidisciplinary teams collaborate seamlessly to efficiently manage increasingly complex systems. The Xpedition process eliminates redundant work in the design process, thereby maximizing team efficiency, while also optimizing product performance and reliability with the help of data management infrastructure. In this way, data integrity can be ensured, and reusable IP can be used for all circuit boards, connectors and cables in the system.

To design a system consisting of multiple interconnected boards (connectors and/or cables), separate, uncoupled board and cabling projects were traditionally brought together using a variety of desktop productivity tools, such as spreadsheets to ensure board internal connections, text files to record system component parameters, and drawing applications to display module-level system structure and hierarchy. This leads to a series of problems: poor coordination between cross-domain design teams; costly intra-system connection errors; time-consuming and laborious manual verification steps; and strict system change rules that hinder system design optimization. This lack of integrated multi-board system design further affects the ability to design networks of interconnected electronic systems (commonly known as systems of systems, which are common in automobiles, aerospace/satellites, industrial automation, and data center infrastructure).

The new Xpedition multi-board system design flow replaces inefficient paper and manual processes with a fully integrated, automated collaborative workflow, increasing design team productivity while reducing development costs. Automated synchronization at all levels of abstraction and automated connector management help design teams achieve time-to-market goals. Maintain connectivity while enabling signal tracking, functional and signal integrity simulation, and design partitioning and repartitioning to ensure "correct by design" system design. The new Xpedition flow will provide a fully concurrent collaborative design environment where teams around the world can work together in "real time," providing companies with flexible and intuitive technology to develop innovative and competitive products.

➤ FloEFD for Solid Edge, launched in November 2016, is a fully embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for front-loading

Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced the availability of a fully embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution designed exclusively for Solid Edge® software. Solid Edge® is a mainstream computer-aided design (CAD) solution developed by the Siemens Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software Division. Solid Edge customers can now simulate fluid flow in their design process using Mentor Graphics®’s FloEFD™ front-loaded CFD product. The FloEFD solution fits the design process perfectly, reducing overall time by 65%-75% compared to other CFD tools.

MentorGraphics' award-winning FloEFD CFD solution automates the most tedious CFD steps, including transferring the model geometry to the CFD application, modeling internal cavities when necessary, and creating the "mesh." FloEFD CFD technology takes the geometry directly from the CAD application, automatically performs the necessary conversions and cavity modeling, and generates an optimal mesh before performing analysis. This approach allows designers to quickly obtain accurate analysis results, allowing them to validate their designs early and often. It also allows them to develop follow-up solutions without worrying about exceeding project deadlines.

“FloEFD for Solid Edge is a step change for customers who need to perform flow analysis in their engineering projects,” said Dan Staples, vice president of Solid Edge product development, Siemens PLM software. “This tool allows engineers to quickly run a variety of ‘what-if’ scenarios while optimizing their designs directly within the Solid Edge window.”

Summary: Mentor Graphics launched the Xpedition PCB design platform in 2014, launched the Tanner Calibre One verification suite for Tanner analog/mixed-signal IC design environment on June 15, 2016, expanded the MentorEmbedded Linux function on September 12, 2016, launched the Xpedition multi-board system for seamless multidisciplinary collaboration in October 2016, and launched the FloEFD front-end loading fully embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for Solid Edge in November 2016. It can be said that Mentor Graphics has been constantly innovating in technological products and solutions. If such a well-known big company is acquired, the impact on the electronics industry will be significant. For more follow-up news in the future, please follow the daily information of Xinshiye WeChat public account.

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