Averant Announces Release of Solidify(TM) 5.0.

HAYWARD, Calif. -- Averant Inc., a leading provider of advanced verification technology for RTL designs, today announces the release of Solidify 5.0, continuing its First In Formal[TM] leadership in formal property verification. The key new features of the tool - three of which are industry firsts - significantly expand upon Solidify's capabilities:

* Guided Proof System (GPS) 2.0. Averant first introduced its breakthrough GPS technology with Solidify 4.0. GPS 2.0 adds verification management and hierarchical verification (an industry first).

        -- Verification management keeps track of the results of
           previous runs, so that when a property passes GPS does not
           need to reverify the property unless the RTL has changed.

        -- When properties are proved for a given block, assumptions
           have usually been made regarding the legal inputs to the
           block. Automated hierarchical verification enables the user
           to prove properties at one level of hierarchy, then go to
           the next level up in the hierarchy, and prove that both the
           properties already proven and the assumptions made at the
           lower level still hold. This allows much more rigor in the
           verification methodology.

* Coverage Expansion (industry first). Solidify 5.0 introduces the CE Engine. The CE Engine includes an innovative technique for testbench-less bug hunting with formal engines. As the CE Engine goes through its iterations, it reports the additional coverage achieved by Solidify. The CE Engine also supports VCD files as inputs to set the starting state for Solidify, allowing bug hunting from a potentially interesting point in the operation of the design.

* isunknown support in SVA, PSL and HPL. Solidify is now the first property checker to support the isunknown construct in SVA, PSL and HPL, for full three-state formal verification of properties.

* Engine improvements for partial pass reduction. Solidify 5.0 introduces a set of new techniques to reduce the number of partially passed properties, and increase the number of fully proven properties. These technologies work in conjunction with the CE Engine, providing for more of the verification work to be done using formal verification, thus improving verification productivity.

* Multi-core operation. Solidify can take advantage of multiple CPU workstations, distributing property verification over the multiple processors for a nearly linear speedup in runtime.

"Solidify 5.0 sets a new standard in static functional verification," commented Ramin Hojati, president of Averant. "Taken as a group, these improvements enable Solidify's users to focus on verification, and not on learning how to run a formal verification tool. Solidify 5.0 allows customers to prove more properties, find more bugs and accelerate verification closure for their projects."

Availability

Solidify 5.0 will be available in July on Linux (32 and 64 bit), Windows and Solaris platforms.

About Averant

Averant Inc., founded in 1997, is a privately held EDA firm pioneering new methodology and technologies for static formal verification. Averant's flagship product is Solidify, a robust formal verification engine that provides the basis for property-based design verification, protocol verification, timing constraint verification, and automatic design checks - all without the need for simulators or test vectors. These tools are easily adopted into the design flow, and help improve quality, reduce risk, and speed the design process. For more information, see our web site at http://www.averant.com.