ARM Holdings, the London stock exchange and Nasdaq listed semi-conductor maker, plans to acquire Irish technology company Duolog Technologies.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but ARM confirmed in a statement to the stock exchange it intended to complete the deal by the third quarter of 2014. Market sources said Duolog, which employs 80 people in Ireland, was valued at over €20 million but the company declined to comment.

Duolog was co-founded by Ray Bulger, the former managing director of Silicon Software Systems (S3) in 1999, along with Mark O'Donovan, company non-executive director and a director of corporate finance advisers Raglan Capital. Dr Jim Mountjoy, a co-founder of Baltimore Technologies and serial investor, is also a non-executive director, as is Rory Hynes, investment executive with Enterprise Equity Venture Capital Group.

Design cycle software

Duolog is best-known for developing Socrates, a platform used by seven of the top 10 semiconductor companies in the world to reduce design cycles by months.

Mr O’Donovan said in a statement: “ARM Holdings, the world’s leading semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) supplier, has acquired Duolog Technologies.

“ARM are present in 95 per cent of smartphones, 50 per cent of iPads/tablet PCs, and are the number-one player in the internet of things market, having shipped more than 50 billion ARM-based chips.”

The company is headquartered in Sandyford. In May, Duolog Technologies broadened its US presence by opening new offices in Dallas and Austin in the United States.

Shareholders in ARM are primarily its board and management. The company is also backed by Denis O'Brien through his investment company Island Capital, as well as clients of Davy stockbrokers and Enterprise Ireland.

Third-quarter target

In a statement, ARM said: “The acquisition will expand ARM’s position at the forefront of deploying complex system intellectual property including debug and trace IP, and will help ARM partners design and deploy system IP and manage integration complexity. The acquisition is expected to be completed in Q3 2014. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.”

Cambridge-based ARM, which is a key supplier to manufacturing giants including Samsung and Apple, has a market capitalisation of £12.96 billion (€15.9 billion).