May 31, 2012 -- Methodics, LLC today announced that it has acquired Missing Link Tools, LLC. Missing Link Tools provides a front-end tool suite to manage digital design and verification. These tools plug into the ProjectIC design-data-management system from Methodics. The resulting combination offers a complete solution for the task of managing analog and digital IP and assembling SOC designs. Missing Link Tools' founders will join Methodics effective immediately.

Missing Link Tools' EVOLVE solution has gained popularity with design and verification teams for its ability to manage the huge volumes of digital design data. Missing Link's customers have seen savings of multiple months on their schedules and ROIs in excess of 15X compared to manual approaches typically used for the tasks the tools automate. EVOLVE provides an Agile framework for build, test, and regressions, all in a central database. Teams can effortlessly recreate failures, triage large regressions, and swap design workspaces. The semiconductor-specific continuous integration release server enables seamless cross-geography collaboration. With cross-vendor coverage support and collection, EVOLVE offers a way to report and manage coverage across testbenches, across time and across design snapshots.

"The addition of Missing Link Tools' technology, which is used by some very well-known companies, greatly extends our vision for providing a unified platform for managing SOC design. This simplifies a complex effort and ensures IP quality throughout the entire IC design process," said Simon Butler, founder and President of Methodics. "The combination of Methodics' ProjectIC and VersIC products, along with the EVOLVE tool gives Methodics the industry's only complete solution for analog and digital SOC development. VersIC offers the best performing analog design DM methodology. EVOLVE manages the digital flow with centralized release and test management. ProjectIC unifies the complete flow and integrates with all modern version-control tools. Together, the tools cover the entire IC project providing a comprehensive IP-development cockpit. It means chips tape out on time, and gives full product lifecycle visibility to the management team."

"With EVOLVE, we enable our customers to tape out on time. We've been looking for a partner on the analog side for a long time," said Eric Peers, founder and President of Missing Link Tools. "When we saw how VersIC seamlessly manages analog design data we knew we had found the right fit. By integrating into the Methodics' toolchain, hand-offs all the way from architecture to final LVS/DRC can now be managed in one central location. Every step is tested, qualified, and tracked. Methodics has dashboarding, reporting, configuration management and IP portfolio management with ProjectIC. Complicated dependencies, bug tracking, release management for distributed teams are all handled seamlessly and easily."