Since Cadence acquired Pointwise back in mid-April, many of you, our customers and partners, have been curious about what the future holds for our eponymous meshing software. This natural curiosity is amplified because of Cadence’s acquisition of Numeca earlier in the year. Who’s Cadence? Why are they getting into CFD? Numeca already has a mesher so why acquire Pointwise? And then the dystopian fear that Big Corp is going to do to CFD what happened to the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Let’s try to answer these questions but not from a biased person like me. Let’s hear from Monica Schnitger.

I consider Monica to be a friend in the CAE business despite the fact that our interaction has mostly been online and only punctuated by the infamous ASSESS Congress in Washington, DC a few years back that ended with many of us getting an unplanned 4-day weekend in our nation’s capital because of a blizzard. (Monica was smart enough to get out of town early which says something about why you should listen to her and not me.) And to be clear, I had nothing to do with the article she wrote.

Many were curious why a company rooted in EDA (electronic design automation) would branch out into CFD. I’ll be honest. When Cadence first contacted me about collaboration I was like “Cadence who?” What I learned was that Cadence has a fantastic amount of computational expertise; it’s just in something I know nothing about. (Electric things have never been my strong suit.) Yet even my inelastic brain could see the connection from chips to boards to packaging to thermal management to CFD to systems. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Cadence is building a multiphysics platform just like ANSYS and Siemens (who both have EDA offerings) it’s just that Cadence is coming at it from the EDA side while others are coming at it from the MCAE side.

Oh, and on the question of “Why acquire Pointwise when you just acquired Numeca who has their own mesher?” I just have to say “Hell yes.” Cadence gets it. They doubled-down on the importance of geometry modeling and mesh generation to the simulation process. They have one mesher nicely coupled to a CFD simulation process and one that’s a free agent. And they have two teams of people ready to elevate both products.

I hope the curious among you participated in CadenceLIVE Americas back in June because CFD got some airtime. Monica did and posted about it on her blog with a title I like: “Cadence on CFD: delight and opportunity.” She heard from Cadence’s CEO and the company’s President.

Let’s cut right to one of her takeaways.

“…Cadence is delighted with these purchases, is leaving them alone to succeed and grow…”

Monica Schnitger

Many of you may be “Yeah, right.” But I can tell you that we are executing the same development plan we had BC (before Cadence). The things important to us (Automate, Accelerate, Innovate) resonate across Cadence CFD. As for literally “leaving them alone,” that would be silly. Monica also reports a positive opportunity:

“the good stuff that comes with being part of a bigger entity: more resources and greater reach.”

Monica Schnitger

Your 3 Calls to Action

First, if you are interested in learning more, the sessions from CadenceLIVE are available on-demand for a limited-time so you can see what you missed.

Second, if you are interested in upcoming events, join us online on 28 July for CadenceCONNECT: Aerospace & Defense Systems Day during which you’ll hear about how CFD fits into Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy and much more.

Third, Cadence CFD has a LinkedIn page that I invite you all to join and follow us on this new CFD path.

So allow me to thank Monica for sharing her insights and I hope we live up to the vision she inferred from CadenceLIVE. As a fourth call to action, I suggest you subscribe to her “hot topics” blog. It’s a great source of news and commentary.

This article contains forward-looking statements regarding Cadence’s business or products. Actual results may differ materially from the information presented here.