0-In and SAS Team Up on Verification IP; Partnership Aids SOC Customers.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 2000

0-In Design Automation, Inc. and Silicon Automation Systems Limited (SAS) announced today that the two companies have entered into a long-term partnership to develop checkers and monitors for the CheckerWare(TM) library, the industry's first white-box, reusable verification IP.

Design and verification engineers use checkers and monitors to capture design intent in their RTL without perturbing their development flow. 0-In Check and 0-In Search use the checkers to find corner-case bugs thoroughly and efficiently with a combination of simulation and formal verification techniques.

Customer Demand Drives CheckerWare Library

The CheckerWare library contains more than 50 different types of checkers for datapath elements, control structures, buses and interfaces in complex designs. More than 30 ASIC and system-on-chip (SOC) designs for networking, telecommunications, and CPU applications have already been instrumented with 0-In checkers.

"The library has been developed in concert with our customers and development partners to ensure that checkers are natural for designers," said 0-In CEO Dr. L. Curtis Widdoes. "As we work with more and more customers, they help us to define additional checker types appropriate for their chips. In response to this demand, we are delighted that SAS is working with 0-In to grow and evolve the CheckerWare library."

CheckerWare Monitors Aid in Rapid Adoption

Checkers for interfaces capture critical multi-cycle timing relationships between blocks in a chip design. These checkers can be combined to capture the complete protocol rules for a complex standard or proprietary bus. 0-In's CheckerWare monitors for such standard buses as PCI and Utopia allow rapid adoption of white-box techniques in SOC designs.

"In addition to adding new checkers to the library, our key focus is to develop and validate additional CheckerWare monitors," said Rajiv C. Mody, CEO, SAS. "We have extensive experience in modeling standard buses, and this expertise allows us to create the most robust protocol monitors in the industry. We are also able to develop customized monitors for proprietary interfaces and on-chip buses under contract from 0-In's SOC customers."

About the Companies

0-In Design Automation, Inc. (pronounced "zero-in") is a privately held electronic design automation (EDA) company that develops tools that zero in on functional bugs in ASIC and IC designs. 0-In was founded in 1996 and is based in San Jose, with a sales office in Boxborough, Mass., and distribution in Japan through Pacific Design Inc.

Founded in 1989, Silicon Automation Systems Limited (SAS) offers solutions to its customers based on its expertise in wireless and broadband access technologies, audio/video and speech processing techniques. SAS has also developed simulation models for hundreds of VLSI devices that involve complex protocols and interfaces. SAS' business proposition of licensing technologies, coupled with end-to-end design capabilities, delivers unique value to its customers. SAS is headquartered in Bangalore, India, and has marketing offices in Japan and the United States.

Note to Editors: 0-In(TM) and CheckerWare(TM) are trademarks of 0-In Design Automation, Inc.