Tom Beckley told Cadence Live European user conference on May 15 that engineers always want Spice to go faster, despite EDA companies, including Cadence telling engineers of many other ways to try an simulate their circuits.

Beckley said he was not making a product announcement but "we are working feverishly on a next-generation, fast Spice. Beckley added that the Cadence had brought in a number of senior developers who had worked at Nassda.

Nassda was bought by Synopsys Inc., in 2005 to settle litigation between the two companies.

Synopsys filed suit in August 2001 alleging that former Synopsys employees who founded Nassda stole Synopsys trade secrets to create Nassda's flagship simulator, HSIM. Synopsys won a partial ruling against Nassda in September 2003.

A series of court rulings issued by Santa Clara County Superior Court in June 2004 found that Nassda had been guilty of stealing trade secrets, Synopys claimed at the time. Synopsys was also pursuing Nassda for patent infringement.

Beckley said that engineers needed to be supported at current nodes and current chip complexity. He said the FastSpice that Cadence is working in can simulate a 29-Gbyte memory in "a matter of hours."

"We are engaged with beta partners," Beckley said but added that Cadence needs to add functionality such as the ability to work with different transistor types and flash memory. "There will be more announcements in the second half of 2012," Beckley said.