Daisy Systems
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronic design automation |
| Founded | January 1981 |
| Founder | Aryeh Finegold, David Stamm, Vinod Khosla |
| Defunct | 1990 |
| Fate | Acquired by Intergraph following Chapter 11 bankruptcy |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California , United States |
Area served | International (including Germany and Israel) |
| Products | EDA hardware and software solutions including schematic capture, logic simulation, parameter extraction, PCB and semiconductor chip design tools; Daisy-DNIX OS; DABL hardware description language |
Daisy Systems Corporation, established in January 1981 in Mountain View, California, was among the early innovators in the electronic design automation (EDA) sector. The company focused on developing both hardware and software solutions for EDA tasks, including schematic capture, logic simulation, parameter extraction, as well as tools tailored for designing printed circuit boards and semiconductor chips.
By the middle of the 1980s, Daisy had expanded its operations internationally with subsidiaries located in Germany and Israel. In 1988, it combined forces with Cadnetix Corporation from Boulder, Colorado, resulting in the formation of Daisy/Cadnetix, Inc. which traded under the name DAZIX. Following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 1990, Daisy was acquired by Intergraph. Intergraph incorporated DAZIX into its EDA division, which subsequently evolved into VeriBest, Inc. Mentor Graphics purchased VeriBest in 1999, and the suite of tools originally developed by Daisy became Mentor’s premier layout software, now known as Mentor Xpedition.
The founders of the company were Aryeh Finegold, David Stamm, and Vinod Khosla. Initial funding came from Fred Adler along with Oak Investment Partners. Daisy Systems, together with Valid Logic Systems and Mentor Graphics—collectively referred to as DMV—played a significant role in advancing front-end design technologies within computer-aided design automation.
People
Daisy Systems served as a career springboard for numerous prominent figures in the tech industry: Harvey Jones went on to become CEO of Synopsys; Vinod Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982; Aryeh Finegold was a co-founder of Mercury Interactive; Dave Stamm and Don Smith established Clarify. Tony Zingale held CEO roles at Clarify, Mercury Interactive, and later Jive Software. Mike Schuh co-founded Intrinsa Corporation before joining Foundation Capital as a General Partner. George T. Haber worked at Sun Microsystems prior to founding tech ventures such as CompCore Multimedia and GigaPixel. Additionally, Dave Millman and Rick Carlson founded EDAC (now known as the Electronic System Design Alliance), which serves as a leading industry association for EDA vendors.
Software
Daisy’s software products ran on Daisy-DNIX, a Unix-like operating system engineered for Intel 80286 processors and subsequent models.
In 1983, Daisy introduced DABL (Daisy Behavioral Language), a hardware description language similar to VHDL, developed by Fred Chow. DABL was utilized for simulating processor interconnect networks and supported Daisy’s emphasis on sophisticated hardware design capabilities.
- 1981 establishments in California
- 1990 disestablishments in California
- American companies disestablished in 1990
- American companies established in 1981
- Companies based in Mountain View, California
- Computer companies disestablished in 1990
- Computer companies established in 1981
- Defunct computer companies based in California
- Defunct computer companies of the United States
- Defunct computer hardware companies
- Defunct computer systems companies
- Defunct manufacturing companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
- Electronic design automation companies
- Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area