The company was founded in 1997 and maintained headquarters in San Jose, California, with facilities throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

[1] Magma was founded in 1997 by a team including Rajeev Madhavan, who was chairman, CEO and president from the company's inception.

[3] Magma had a particularly strong presence in the convergence device segment through key customers such as Qualcomm, Broadcom and Texas Instruments.

[12] Claims and counter-claims accelerated, resulting in separate court cases in California and Delaware, and a number of disputed patents.

As part of the settlement Magma made a $12.5 million payment to Synopsys and each company cross-licensed four previously disputed patents to the other.