SiWorks Standardizes on Blast Create, Delivers "Magma-Ready" Semiconductor IP Solutions for Leading-Edge Wireless Applications

SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 9, 2004 — Magma® Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA), provider of chip design solutions, today announced that SiWorks®, a wireless semiconductor intellectual property (IP) company that specializes in the design of analog, digital and mixedsignal integrated circuits for wireless communications, has standardized on Blast Create™. SiWorks selected the Magma software for its soft IP cores after evaluating several solutions and conducting benchmarks. Results showed that Blast Create delivered better quality results, faster runtime and provided a much simpler flow for integrating IP cores into system-on-chip (SoC) designs.

SiWorks has also joined the MagmaTies Program and will provide Magma-Ready IP. As a member, SiWorks will verify its cores in the Magma flow to ensure that they can be integrated into mutual customers’ wireless SoC designs.

“SiWorks specializes in providing semiconductor IP solutions that comply with emerging wireless standards,” said Mike Lee, director of Business Development of SiWorks. “We evaluated the leading front-end design solutions on a 0.13-micron design using one of our IP cores that had very tight timing requirements. We selected Blast Create because it delivered better performance at lower power and provided complete physical synthesis capabilities. As a leading IP provider to the wireless industry we are very interested in providing the best solution to our customers.”

“We are pleased to see SiWorks committing to the Magma flow. Many of our wireless customers use third-party commercial IP cores,” said Yatin Trivedi, director of product marketing for Magma. “With a validated flow accompanying the IP cores from SiWorks, mutual customers will benefit from performance, area and power improvements across the entire design.”

The “Magma Ready” IP Verification Process

Magma has designed comprehensive soft and hard IP verification processes to enable fast deployment of partner IP products in IC designs. Through the MagmaTies program, partners are given access to Magma software, allowing them to meet the necessary requirements. To qualify, soft IP providers such as SiWorks must support Blast Create with industry-standard Verilog and VHDL formats and the most popular synthesis pragmas. They must also be able to import constraints and verify the quality of results (QoR), perform formal verification against a known good netlist, validate the timing using a static timing analyzer and create a script and documentation for the product.

“We welcome SiWorks as a Magma-Ready IP provider,” said Michael Ma, vice president of business development for Magma. “With the addition of SiWorks to this program, Magma and its partners are expanding and enhancing the variety of Magma-Ready IP in the market.”

About Magma Design Automation

Magma provides leading software for designing highly complex integrated circuits while maximizing Quality of Results with respect to area, timing and power, and at the same time reducing overall design cycles and costs. Magma provides a complete RTL-to-GDSII design flow that includes prototyping, synthesis, place & route, and signal and power integrity chip design capabilities in a single executable, offering “The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon”™. Magma’s software also includes products for advanced physical synthesis and architecture development tools for programmable logic devices (PLDs); capacitance extraction; and characterization and modeling. The company's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

About SiWorks Inc.

SiWorks is a leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property cores. SiWorks specializes in analog, digital and mixed-signal integrated circuit design for new and emerging wireless communication standards including IEEE 802.11a/b/g (WiFi), 802.16d/e (WiMAX Forum™) and 802.15.3a (UWB-MBOA) . SiWorks has successfully licensed semiconductor IP solutions and has completed complex integrated circuit designs for both start-up and established semiconductor companies world-wide. The company has assembled a team of talented design engineers with over 80 years of experience in the design of integrated circuits. SiWorks is a privately held Canadian corporation. For more information, please visit the SiWorks web site: www.siworks.com.

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Magma is a registered trademark and Blast Create and “The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon” are trademarks of Magma Design Automation Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including statements that the “Magma Ready” IP verification process ensures that the IP products can be quickly integrated into designs and statements about the features and benefits of Magma’s system and SiWorks’ cores, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, but not limited to, Magma’s and SiWorks’ decision to continue working together, the companies’ products’ abilities to produce the desired results and the companies’ abilities to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). The companies undertake no additional obligation to update these forward-looking statements.