Cadence Design Systems: Making Modern Digital Technology Possible
Company founded: 1983
Founders: UC Berkeley Professor Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, UC Berkeley Professor Richard Newton (UC Berkeley PhD, 1978, electrical engineering), James Solomon (UC Berkeley BSE, ME, electrical engineering)
Digital technology has had a pervasive and profound impact on our world. The technology’s impact was made possible by squeezing billions of electronic components (e.g., transistors) of nanometric size onto little integrated circuits—also known as chips. However, the design and fabrication of those chips would not be possible without the use of computer-based design tools. Alberto Luigi Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was at the forefront of inventing those design tools and launching the electronic design automation (EDA) industry (also known as ECAD, or electronic computer-aided design).
In 1975, Alberto came to UC Berkeley as a young engineer from Milan, Italy. At that time semiconductor-integrated circuit chips were largely designed manually by specialized engineers. The design process was laborious, error-prone, time-consuming, and consequently resulted in expensive chips with limited functionality.
At UC Berkeley, Alberto focused his research on optimization algorithms for designing chips. It was an exciting time for the promising nascent field of EDA, and UC Berkeley was at its forefront. That enabled Alberto and his faculty colleagues to raise funds from companies to build an entire floor on top of Cory Hall (initially built in 1950) dedicated to research on computer-based tools for chip design, testing, and fabrication. The exterior of the new top floor features a computer chip–inspired architectural motif.
During that period Alberto, along with his postdocs and graduate students, developed computer simulation tools, hardware description languages, and component arrangement methodologies that accelerated chip design, optimized chip performance, and minimized power consumption. Alberto and his UC Berkeley colleagues were firm believers in putting the advancement of knowledge and societal impact above their economic interests. Accordingly, they made their EDA innovations freely available (instead of requiring royalty-bearing patent and software licenses).
To help market his innovations and apply them to the specific needs of individual digital technology companies, Alberto cofounded Cadence Design Systems in 1983, with UC Berkeley EECS professor Richard Newton and UC Berkeley alumnus James Solomon. Four years later, Alberto cofounded Synopsys, another EDA company. Both companies have grown into multinationals that employ tens of thousands of people. As of 2023, EDA was a $16 billion industry.
Alberto won the Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies in 2023. The award committee cited him for “radically transforming” the design of the chips that power today’s electronic devices, leading to “the modern semiconductor industry” and creating “a rich ecosystem of electronic design automation (EDA) techniques that revolutionized—and remain at the core of—how we build computer systems.” In addition to Alberto’s scientific achievements, he cofounded Cadence and Synopsys, which “collectively drive the entire semiconductor industry,” the committee added.1
As of 2024, Alberto was still serving on the board of Cadence, which he describes as “like one of my children.”2 He also supports UC Berkeley’s entrepreneurship community in many ways, most notably as an advisor to UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck startup accelerator with a special emphasis on SkyDeck’s chip track and SkyDeck Europe Milano program.
1 BBVA Foundation, “Frontiers of Knowledge Awards,” www.frontiersofknowledgeawards-fbbva.es/noticias/15th-edition-information-communication-technologies-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli/.
2 BBVA Foundation, “Frontiers of Knowledge Awards,” www.frontiersofknowledgeawards-fbbva.es/noticias/15th-edition-information-communication-technologies-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli/.
Published in Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups, August 2025
