Accenture buys Cientra to grow its presence in the chip engineering market
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Accenture is expanding its presence in the semiconductor sector with the purchase of Cientra, a consultancy that provides chip design services.
The deal is the second semiconductor-related acquisition announced by the company this week. On Monday, Accenture disclosed that it has purchased Excelmax, a chip design consultancy with about 450 employees. The two transactions’ financial terms were not disclosed.
Cientra is headquartered in New Jersey with offices across Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Frankfurt. Its more than 500 professionals develop chips for companies in verticals such as the consumer electronics, automotive and telecommunications segments. Ciera’s website states that it has worked with more than 50 clients to date.
One of the company’s focus areas is developing analog and mixed signal chips. This is a broad product category that encompasses, among other technologies, semiconductor-based sensors and power management integrated circuits. The latter modules are used for tasks such as changing the voltage level of the electricity in a system.
Cientra also develops digital processors. The consultancy says that its engineers have experience designing chips based on RISC-V and ARM, two of the most pervasive semiconductor architectures on the market. Cientra can implement those architectures in several kinds of products including ASICs, highly efficient processors optimized for a set of computing tasks specified by the customer.
Some of the consultancy’s staffers specialize in software development. It can deliver device drivers and firmware, as well as optimize a client’s real-time operating system of choice to run on a newly developed processor.
The acquisition of Cientra will make a significant amount of new semiconductor talent available for Accenture. According to the consulting giant, the deal adds about 530 engineers and other professionals to its network of Advanced Technology Centers in India.