We recently had the pleasure of celebrating CAST’s twenty-fifth year in operation. We've been focused on reusable silicon intellectual property through this whole period, though the terminology and certainly the industry has changed over time: we started with "synthesizable simulation models" before terms like "IP cores" were even coined.
CAST has thrived this long—as many other IP firms have come and gone–through a commitment to making silicon IP both truly reusable and extremely cost-effective.
As the IP industry and semiconductor design practices evolved, we learned that just providing excellent IP designs is not sufficient. Delivering IP that's actually easy to reuse and significantly benefits the customer requires much more, including:
rigorous coding practices and excellent documentation,
bundling of scripts, testbenches, and other implementation essentials,
backing by knowledgeable engineers and proactive customer support, and
fair pricing with straightforward licensing.
These lessons have paid off, as hundreds of customers shipping millions of product units have found the IP we offer helps make their designs competitive in a crowded marketplace. (For more on the company’s history, see see the 20th Anniversary Newsletter issue.)
An Ever-Improving IP Product Line
Excellent IP is also essential, of course. For this we’ve augmented our own engineering team by partnering with brilliant IP developers around the world. Our customers then get more choices of innovative, class-leading IP, all with the reusability and outstanding support that CAST pioneered.
Today our product line ranges from the standards-based IP fundamental to most system designs to advanced solutions that are increasingly critical to particular application areas.
A Personal Perspective
I myself have been involved with CAST since 2001, when I saw the company’s expertise in reusability and marketing and sales effectiveness as benefits for the image and video compression engineering firm I headed. I then joined CAST in 2010, eventually becoming CEO.
Today I'm more excited to be part of CAST than ever before. Not just because we have survived twenty five years—in IP I think only ARM is older—but rather because we continue to build a team and product line that together can deliver on the promise of reusable IP for many more year to come, to the great benefit of our customers.
— Nikos Zervas, CEO
A distributed company for twenty-five years, we marked this anniversary by getting everyone together in the same place.
“Everyone” today includes CAST engineering teams in the USA, Czech Republic, and Greece; technical sales people in multiple locations; and a lean executive management team in the USA and Greece.
For the anniversary, much of the company gathered in our CEO’s home country of Greece during a week in October, bringing families and enjoying group and private touring time as well as all-hands meetings.
It was an invigorating and inspiring time, helping us all to focus on bringing even more success to CAST customers in 2019 and beyond.
