Aspex Technology Uses Synopsys' TimeMill to Tape Out Multimillion-Transistor Programmable DSP Chip.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2001

TimeMill Fills Gaps in Design Flow and Improves Productivity

by Allowing What-If Experiments

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) today announced that Aspex Technology Ltd. of Uxbridge, England, a fabless semiconductor company designing scaleable digital signal processing (DSP) integrated circuits, used Synopsys' high-speed, high-capacity circuit simulator, TimeMill(R), to successfully tape out its VLSI Associative String Processor (VASP) chip.

"TimeMill filled a number of gaps in our design flow," said Dr. Ian P. Jalowiecki, executive vice president of engineering and director at Aspex Technology. "Of all the solutions we have tried, Synopsys' TimeMill continues to serve Aspex as the `golden' circuit simulation tool to verify our designs. TimeMill's capabilities allow us to conduct significant what-if experiments earlier in the design flow, which catches potentially serious problems far earlier. TimeMill substantially enhanced our confidence in the resulting custom-designed modules prior to tape out."

"Aspex Technology had an aggressive product development cycle," said Antun Domic, senior vice president and general manager of the Nanometer Analysis and Test business unit at Synopsys. "We are delighted that our premier circuit simulation tool played such a key role in Aspex's design flow. By using Synopsys' TimeMill, Aspex achieved significant productivity, capacity, throughput and accuracy on its multimillion-transistor design."

TimeMill accurately simulates and analyzes dynamic timing and functionality, and helps designers cut weeks off their design cycles by identifying timing problems in both the pre- and post-layout phases of IC design. TimeMill, the industry's leading circuit simulator and dynamic timing analyzer, delivers results significantly faster and with far greater capacity than SPICE, while maintaining near-SPICE accuracy levels.

The Aspex VASP 1024, which features 1024 processing elements and contains more than three million transistors, went from concept to silicon in less than a year. It was running applications, written in industry standard C with extensions, within two weeks of silicon tape out.

About Aspex Technology

Aspex, headquartered in Uxbridge, United Kingdom (U.K.), is a venture-backed, privately owned fabless semiconductor company that has more than 450 engineering years of research and development in high-performance computing architecture. Aspex, drawing on technology developed at Brunel University in the U.K., has developed a scalable computer architecture proven with a number of customers over many years, called the Associative String Processor (ASP). It offers standalone ASP-based devices, IP cores and development and evaluation systems. The ASP architecture affords high performance, scalability and the software-programmable flexibility required in current and next-generation media-processing products/ appliances. Corporate headquarters is located at: Building 2, Brunel Science Park, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, UK UB8 3PQ. Telephone: [phone]. Facsimile: [phone]. Email: [e-mail]. Aspex Technology can be found on the Internet at: http://www.aspextechnology.com.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS), headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., creates leading electronic design automation (EDA) tools for the global electronics market. The company delivers advanced design technologies and solutions to developers of complex integrated circuits, electronic systems, and systems on a chip. Synopsys also provides consulting and support services to simplify the overall IC design process and accelerate time to market for its customers. Visit Synopsys at http://www.synopsys.com.

Note to Editors: TimeMill and Synopsys are registered trademarks of Synopsys, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.