Centillium Communications Licenses Magma's Blast Fusion Physical Design System

Benchmark Delivers 10 Percent Reduction in Area and Significant Improvement in Turn-around Time

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 5, 2001-- Magma® Design Automation, Inc., a provider of chip design solutions, announced today that Centillium Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTLM - news), innovator of broadband communications technology, has licensed the Blast Fusion(TM) physical design system. The licensing agreement is the direct result of Blast Fusion meeting the strict benchmark requirements set by Centillium against the traditional place and route point tool solution. By using Blast Fusion, Centillium's designers were able to complete the block design faster and reduce the area by 10 percent.

"Smaller area and faster time to market are especially important for consumer applications such as DSL," said Roy Batruni, vice president of engineering at Centillium Communications, Inc. "Because Blast Fusion is a single, integrated system, we didn't need to import and export design data between point tools. This solution helped us complete the block design faster while preventing us from introducing errors which could compromise performance."

"We are very pleased that Centillium has recognized the value of our integrated system," said Rajeev Madhavan, CEO of Magma. "We look forward to the successful completion of the DSL chipset."

About Centillium Communications

Centillium Communications, Inc. is combining technical innovation and customer commitment to make broadband communications a market reality. Centillium consistently delivers value to its customers by providing broadband networking systems for applications across all market segments. The company designs and markets communications chipset solutions for central office equipment, digital loop carrier (DLC) line cards, and customer premise equipment for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Voice over Packet (VoP) and Premise Networking. The Centillium Communications headquarters are located at 47211 Lakeview Blvd., Fremont, CA 94538. Additional information is available at www.centillium.com.

About Magma

Magma provides design and implementation software that enables chip designers to reduce the time it takes to design and produce complex integrated circuits used in the communications, computing, consumer electronics, networking and semiconductor industries. Its products, Blast Fusion(TM) and Blast Chip(TM), utilize a new methodology for the design of complex multimillion-gate chips by combining traditionally separate front-end and back-end design processes into an integrated design flow. This integrated solution reduces timing closure iterations, which accelerates time-to-market for its customers. Blast Plan(TM) works with Blast Fusion and Blast Chip to deliver hierarchical planning and design capability for large integrated circuits and system-on-chips. In addition to the design and implementation products, its Blast Noise(TM) works with Blast Fusion and Blast Chip to analyze and correct integrated circuits for noise problems that may impact chip performance.

Magma's proprietary FixedTiming® methodology and single data model architecture serve as the technical foundation for Magma's products. FixedTiming enables Magma's products to optimize for timing performance throughout the flow, predict circuit speed before detailed physical design, and deliver final timing that approximates the predicted circuit speed. The single data model architecture contains and manages the logical and physical data for the chip design, allowing Magma's products to shorten the design cycle and increase the efficiency of the design process.

Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., the company maintains sales and support offices in Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Corporate headquarters are at 2 Results Way, Cupertino, Calif., 95014. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Magma and FixedTiming are registered trademarks and Blast Chip, Blast Fusion, Blast Noise and Blast Plan are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Contact:

     Magma Design Automation, Inc.       Monica Marmie, 408/864-2027       monical@magma-da.com