Cadence Expands Enterprise Verification Solution to Include Planning, Unified Verification Metrics and Industry Databases

New Capabilities Shorten Development Cycle Using Microsoft Word ® with Standard SQL Databases to Accelerate Metric-Driven Verification

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Sep 9, 2008 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation, today introduced significant enhancements to its enterprise verification solution that will help project and program leaders better manage complex verification projects by providing much greater visibility from specification to closure. With these enhancements, project managers can now more easily create verification plans, expand the scope and scalability of project metrics being managed, and uniquely combine formal verification, testbench simulation, and verification acceleration metrics for integrated verification process management. These new capabilities can lead to higher quality products, more productive multi-specialist verification teams, and increased project predictability.

Mainstream adoption of coverage-driven verification (CDV) methodology such as the open verification methodology (OVM) and e reuse methodology (eRM) have improved the quality and productivity of verification teams. However, challenges remain around creating a useful verification plan, leveraging assertion-based verification (ABV) and formal verification in a CDV approach, and coping with the increased volume of data. Cadence now provides a new metric-driven verification (MDV) methodology and solution which extends CDV to address these issues.

"The Cadence verification solution continues to transform our approach to managing verification projects," said Dominic Wong, Engineering Tools Strategic Manager, of Teradyne. "Engineering specifications are now the golden document used to determine high-quality verification completion. In addition we firmly believe in formal verification, and the ability to incorporate our specification into the process brings more leverage to our existing methodology."

The Incisive® Enterprise Manager now includes a new verification planner, aiding creation of verification plans for MDV either interactively or by directly annotating Microsoft Word ®- or PDF-formatted specifications. The integration of Incisive Formal Verifier expands metrics to include assertions and checks, complementing metrics from Incisive Enterprise Simulator, Incisive Xtreme III, and Incisive Palladium, resulting in unified verification metrics. Incisive Verification IP is MDV-enabled to jump start the methodology for standard protocols. Integration with scalable SQL databases handles the explosive growth of metrics for verification, and provides open metrics management and analysis across Incisive formal, testbench simulation and acceleration technologies.

"More project management desktops are running Microsoft Office ® and the Cadence technology provides a unique link between the Office world and workstation-based engineering processes that facilitate electronics development," said Sanjay Ravi, Worldwide Industry Managing Director, High Tech and Electronics Industry, EPG, Microsoft. "By addressing the need of multi-specialist SoC and system-development teams for more reliable enterprise-level verification processes, this new offering clearly demonstrates the power and success of Microsoft’s commitment to work with companies such as Cadence to develop role-based productivity solutions to provide broad access to enterprise data and processes through familiar Microsoft productivity tools."

These innovations enable better risk mitigation by clearly documenting requirements in the executable specification, across hardware and embedded software. They provide a correlation of project requirements—in Microsoft Word or PDF—to executable plans, with change management and tracking, while minimizing the verification costs associated with the rippling effect of hundreds of specification changes.

"The improvements we’ve made to the Cadence enterprise verification solution will go a long way in providing managers with the visibility they’ve been seeking to ensure their complex verification projects stay on track," said Michal Siwinski, Enterprise Verification group marketing director at Cadence. "The efficiencies gained through our planning and project management technology can really mean the difference between meeting verification goals and missing them, resulting in higher project risks."

Cadence enterprise verification technology will be the topic of several sessions at CDNLive! Silicon Valley , the Cadence user group conference that begins today at the San Jose Convention Center and San Jose Marriott Hotel.

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. Cadence reported 2007 revenues of approximately $1.6 billion, and has approximately 5,100 employees. 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.