HCL Technologies Partners with Magma to Offer Expert Design Services for Leading Edge IC Designs

Several Key Designs Completed Using Magma IC Implementation Software

New Delhi, July 3, 2003 -- Magma® Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq:LAVA - News), a provider of chip design solutions, announced today that HCL Technologies (HCLT) has joined the MagmaTies Design Services Partnership program. HCLT has completed several integrated circuit (IC) designs using Blast Fusion APX(TM) (Advanced Physical Design System) and Magma has validated the quality of these results. This partnership will enable Magma to expand the availability of expert design services to complement its complete, integrated RTL-to-GDSII chip implementation flow.

"HCLT has considerable expertise in the area of IC design and has leveraged this for several organizations across the world," said Amitava Roy, executive vice president at HCLT. "Our partnership with Magma has proven very successful in just a few months and we are looking forward to leveraging the partnership and offering higher value to our worldwide customers."

In just 15 weeks HCLT was able to complete a 2.5-million-gate, 0.13-micron telecom chip using Blast Fusion APX. Floorplanning was a major challenge in this design because placement of all the cells in most critical paths had to be optimized for complete design closure. By using Blast Fusion's powerful features such as macro placement and physical partitioning, HCLT engineers avoided timing closure obstacles at the end of physical design, maximizing the quality of results while completing this large design on time. HCLT also completed a number of hard intellectual property (IP) cores. With Blast Fusion, the designers were able to use special optimization techniques to increase the speed of one of the modules of the processor to 300 MHz, a goal they were unable to achieve using their previous point-tool-based design flow.

HCLT also used Blast Fusion to complete three low-power physical designs with complexities up to 500K gates including a datapath controller, XGMII multiplexor, and a communications IP. All used standard cell, I/O and memory libraries from Artisan Components and its NurLogic Design division. Each was designed for the 0.18-micron process technology of Taiwan's largest pure-play foundry.

Earlier this year HCLT became the first company to join SuperH, Inc.'s Design Agency Program. Currently, it is also developing a back-end system-on-chip (SoC) flow based on Magma software and the SuperH processor IP cores. Moving forward, the team will integrate SuperH and their own IPs into a variety of SoCs using Magma software, simplifying and reducing the development time for their mutual customers.

"IC design activities in India are growing significantly. HCLT is considered to be one of the leaders in high-tech consulting and is emerging as one of the top IC design service providers," said Lung Chu, vice president of Asia-Pacific operations for Magma Design Automation. "We are pleased to have HCLT as a partner and to help us provide exceptional design resources to the global market."

About Magma Design Automation

Magma software is used to design fast, multimillion-gate integrated circuits, providing "The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon"(TM) and enabling chip designers to reduce the time required to produce complex ICs. Magma's products for prototyping, synthesis, and place & route provide a single executable for RTL-to-GDSII chip design. The company's Blast Create(TM), Blast Fusion(TM), Blast Fusion APX(TM), Blast Plan(TM), Blast Noise®, Blast Rail(TM) and Blast RTL(TM) products utilize Magma's patented FixedTiming® methodology and single data model architecture to reduce the timing-closure iterations often required between the logic and physical processes in conventional IC design flows.

Magma maintains headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as well as facilities in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; Durham, N.C.; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Newcastle, Wash.; and in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. The company's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Magma, Blast Noise and FixedTiming are registered trademarks, and Blast Create, Blast Fusion, Blast Fusion APX, Blast Plan, Blast Rail, and "The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon" are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is one of India's leading global IT services and product engineering companies, providing value-added, software-led IT solutions and services to large and medium-scale organizations. Founded in 1991, HCL Tech focuses on technology as well as R&D outsourcing, with the objective of working with clients in areas at the core of their business.

HCL Tech delivers these services through an extensive offshore software development infrastructure and a vast global marketing network, spanning 26 offices in 14 countries that enables scalable, flexible and cost-effective delivery. The company's well defined business strategy has enabled it to build domain expertise across a host of chosen verticals including banking, funds management, insurance, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, automotives, semi-conductors and retail.

As of 31 December 2002, HCL Tech along with its subsidiaries had 7,788 employees. Together with its knowledge of embedded systems, core technologies and application development expertise, HCL Tech is positioned as a composite solutions provider equipped to cater to the entire gamut of IT needs. For more information, visit HCL Technologies at www.hcltech.com

Disclaimer
Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies/ entities in which we have made strategic investments, withdrawal of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company.