Cadence and Virtutech Extend Metric-Driven Verification to Virtual Systems Development

Combined Offering Improves System Quality and Project Predictability for Teams Creating and Leveraging Virtual Platforms

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- May 19, 2009 -- Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation, and Virtutech®, Inc., the leader in virtualized systems development (VSD), today announced a collaboration to integrate Cadence® Incisive® Software Extensions with the Virtutech Simics® high-speed system-level virtual platform. The combined offering will allow engineers to develop electronic designs on a virtual platform well in advance of hardware availability, resulting in improved system-level schedule predictability from prototyping through functional verification closure.

“Our research continues to point to the increasing focus on software development and verification throughout the hardware and system engineering process, as well as a continued interest in technologies able to facilitate higher-level architecture engineering, earlier software design, and more comprehensive system verification techniques,” said Matt Volckmann, senior analyst and program manager, embedded software and tools practice, VDC Research Group. “In providing customers the combined capabilities of hardware/software co-verification and virtual platform solutions, the integration between Cadence’s Incisive Software Extensions and Virtutech’s Simics targets these advanced engineering requirements.”



The integration will also enable application of the Open Verification Methodology Multi-Language (OVM-ML) to hardware/software co-verification earlier in the project development cycle. Virtutech’s Simics is a flexible and scalable software solution that models electronic systems with high performance and fidelity, enabling early development, faster testing and better management of development projects. Cadence Incisive Software Extensions connect verification testbench, planning and management to drive each software function in the virtual platform, including the embedded and application software, resulting in high–quality, corner-case functional verification for the exported virtual platform.

“We develop virtual platforms as a way to help enable early software development by our customers, and to help reduce the time required to deliver higher quality systems,” said Brian Branson, Director of Design Technology at Freescale. “We are pleased to see this cooperation between Cadence and Virtutech since we collaborate with each other in the EDA and ESL domains.”

Using the combined technology, customers will be able to stress their hardware/software interface, enabling them to discover functional bugs much earlier. It stimulates the hardware design with firmware scenarios before RTL becomes available, detecting very early hardware-dependent software use case bugs.

“The integration with Cadence technology enables Virtutech’s Simics solution to build a bridge from the traditional EDA flow to the more software-centric view of virtualized systems development (VSD) and bring all the benefits of virtualization and fast simulation,” said Michel Genard, vice president of marketing at Virtutech. “VSD enables software developers to run multi-core multi-board virtual platforms at very high speed and discover more complex hardware/software bugs at the architectural level early in the design process. At the same time, organizations are applying Simics far beyond their initial use cases as an agent of organizational change.”

“Cadence is collaborating with Virtutech to provide mutual customers with high-speed virtual platforms verified with hardware/software metric-driven techniques,” said Ran Avinun, group marketing director at Cadence. “The combination of Virtutech Simics and Incisive Software Extensions will improve the productivity of system engineers through application of planning, management, stimulus, checking and monitoring of unique hardware/software use cases.”


About Cadence
Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware, methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.

About Virtutech
Virtutech, Inc. is the leader in product development process improvement through virtualized systems development (VSD). Virtutech Simics® allows for a revolutionary change in the product development process at a full system level rather than a component level and is the only commercial solution that delivers the four most important criteria for successful deployment of hardware virtualization in the electronics equipment development process: speed, scalability, model availability, and control. Simics customers report reduced time to market, better project risk management, lower capital expenditure, product development cost and maintenance as well as increased quality and individual productivity. Virtutech serves the needs of the world’s leading OEMs in the high-performance computing, aerospace and defense, telecommunications, networking and semiconductor industries. Virtutech is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, visit www.virtutech.com.