Samsung invests $4 million in ESL tool vendor

Dylan McGrath

September 12, 2012

Dylan McGrath

SAN FRANCISCO—The venture capital arm of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. made a $4 million strategic investment in Carbon Design Systems Inc., a supplier of unified virtual prototypes for electronic system-level (ESL) design and software development, Carbon said Wednesday (Sept. 12).   

Carbon (Acton, Mass.) said it has also entered into a strategic partnership with Samsung (Seoul, South Korea).

Funds from the strategic investment will be used as working capital and to support Carbon's ongoing development of ESL design tools, including virtual prototypes, Carbon said. The company claims to offer the only unified virtual prototype that scales from 100 percent accuracy to hundreds of MIPS performance. Initiatives will be undertaken to expand the company's virtual prototypes, Carbon said.

"The strategic partnership will offer Samsung a way to more broadly expand and fast track adoption of ESL tools," said Jung Ho Kim, an investment manager at Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Samsung's venture capital arm, in a statement.

"We work closely with various project groups at Samsung. Its deep technical knowledge of system-level design will be beneficial to us as we market key technologies to expand the reach of fast virtual prototypes that do not compromise accuracy," said Rick Lucier, Carbon's president and CEO.

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