Why Tuscany?
Tuscany Design Automation is different from other EDA startups that you might encounter, and we invite you to find out why. Tuscany's products have deep roots in five generations of advanced platform technology. Because Tuscany's technology started with a general development platform, Tuscany has been able to bring far more power to bear on advanced design automation problems.
Tuscany's Team is focused on providing solutions to our customers that build strong relationships. We deliver excellent value with unparalleled technology, and responsive support over the long haul. We act on the knowledge that making you successful is the only path to making us successful.
Good technology and high objectives are fine, but results are what tell the story. Several major fabless semiconductor companies have discovered that Tuscany’s team and Tuscany’s technology work the way these statements would lead you to expect. These companies are regularly using our technology to solve some of the most difficult problems in the industry. Let us show you what we can do to solve yours.
An Unusual History
One of our founders, David Fletcher, was hired by SiTera, a Longmont, Colorado-based startup, to build tools they could use in the development of their flagship network processors. SiTera was quite successful, and Vitesse Semiconductor acquired the company in May 2000 for $750M. Initially, the tools David created were used to place critical portions of SiTera's processor. This worked so well that eventually 25% of the network processor was constructed with these tools.
The tools were constructed on top of an EDA platform codenamed Badger. This is the fifth platform constructed by David; previous versions were built at HP, Cadence and NCR microelectronics. David and his team designed the technology to be extremely modular in order to allow for it to be easy to extend and grow.
When Vitesse's strategic direction changed, they allowed the technology to be spun out. David and Dr. Paula Beaty, a key member of his team, founded Tuscany Design Automation. Vitesse was the original investor in the company, exchanging the technology for a small equity stake in Tuscany. Friends and family played a key role in the early stages. Flywheel Ventures became the first institutional investor in the summer of 2005.
Tuscany was able to start operations with a very solid, silicon-proven system, and we have continued to improve the tools and the underlying platform. A number of customers have now found the software solutions to be efficient, reliable and extremely flexible.
Our development plans are built around rapid advances that we have mapped out for our already-solid system. Within this powerful environment, we think we can provide the best IC physical design software that money can buy. We rarely find a need to take shortcuts in implementations. We are focused on solving real-world design problems in the fastest and most flexible way possible. We treat our customers as partners, and we make sure our partners succeed.
Management Team
Daniel L. Ellsworth, Ph.D, Chief Operating Officer
Prior to joining Tuscany was most recently with LSI Logic for 6 years. He held the position Vice President of Memory, Microprocessors and Cores until May 2003, and maintained a consulting role until 2004. Prior, he held the position of Vice President, Memory and Mixed Signal Design for 3 years at LSI Logic. Responsibilities included leadership of geographically distributed R&D organizations, business unit product support, development of new technologies and intellectual property, and internal design flows for these technologies. Until the merger with LSI Logic in 1998, he was Vice President of Technology at Symbios Logic. Dr. Ellsworth received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University in 1981.
David Fletcher, Chief Technology Officer, MSEE Stanford (1983)
David has been building EDA solutions for more than 20 years. He was the architect and lead developer for the Badger platform within Vitesse Semiconductor, from 1997 to 2001. Prior to that he was employed at HP as part of the IA-64 (Itanium) development team. He has also held positions with Cadence Design Systems, NCR Microelectronics, and LSI Logic.