Beach Solutions Acquires VCX Software and IP Management Capability to Complete Its ESL Design Environment for Platform-Based Systems, SoCs and IP.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Beach Solutions, a leading innovator in the emerging electronic system level (ESL) market segment within the EDA industry, today announced it has acquired VCX Software, Ltd., a pioneer in semiconductor intellectual property (IP) management, profiling, delivery and IP portals. VCX Software runs the world-renowned IP portal: http://www.theVCX.com. Beach is committed to enhancing theVCX.com portal and supporting the numerous commercial and informational websites that utilize the VCX Gateway search engine. This acquisition further enhances Beach's design environment by adding the robust and scaleable VCX database and its proven IP management infrastructure. The Beach tool set is now used by hardware, software and verification teams for productivity gains in producing IP, subsystems and configurable platforms and their deliverables. Beach users will benefit from this integration of ESL productivity with the numerous robust and extensive IP management scenarios.

The combined entities deliver:

--Platform-based ESL design environment combining the EASI-Suite (TM) tools for IP and system interface creation and reuse with advanced IP management, delivery and version control;

--A "correct-by-design" process methodology that significantly reduces time-to-market and verification costs;

--Internal and external IP management supply chain infrastructure that improves delivery, visibility and quality;

--Access to over 300 currently listed IP providers that will have access to Beach's advanced IP capture and quality-checking utilities.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The VCX staff, technology and IP are transferring to Beach.

The combined company solution addresses the growing need for platform-focused methodologies that improve productivity, and can realize the time-to-market benefits of enterprise wide IP reuse. Beach Solutions' technology eliminates mismatches in hardware/software design specification, and combined with VCX IP management technology further enables the true potential of IP based platform design on a corporate wide basis.

About Beach EASI Studio

Beach's EASI Studio tools are used to capture, check and then automatically generate the hardware and software interface, verification environment and documentation for the IP blocks and system interface logic. By combining this technology with VCX's integrated IP database offering, Beach can now offer a comprehensive enterprise wide ESL design and reuse environment that reduces time-to-market and lowers costs, while improving both IP quality and SoC platform reusability. The number of files required to represent a platform is becoming overwhelming. The Beach tools create hardware views of the IP and system in VHDL and Verilog, software views in C, C++ and Assembly code, verification views VHDL, Verilog and Verisity e, Test and debug views in Lauterbach format for In Circuit Emulation (ICE) just to name a few. In addition, Beach tools create documentation in HTML, Word or Filemaker formats that accurately match the other views freeing up designers to focus on higher value activities.

Beach will extend the benefits of EASI Studio across the development enterprise by providing network-accessible and integrated data management, with XML-based import/export capabilities. It will provide links to all the common and popular versioning protocols and systems, such as CVS and Clearcase.

"This acquisition is in response to Beach's customer requests to add better design management capabilities for today's most complex SoCs and their derivatives. Beach's customers include some of the industry's largest semiconductor, consumer product developers, and system houses have reported up to 60% savings in time-to-market on a single project using EASI Studio. VCX's database technology is one of the best kept secrets in the industry and is an ideal complement to the Beach offering for improving the efficiency of IP based system design," said Doug McCafferty, President and CEO at Beach.

Jim Ensell, Chair of the FSA IP subcommittee commented on the announcement, and speaking on behalf of that body, emphasized the past contributions of VCX Software, and the potential benefit to the fabless community of its merger with Beach Solutions, "VCX Software has in its many guises, been a real contributor towards the creation of a higher quality IP supply-chain. This new combined entity of VCX Software and Beach Solutions technology promises to bring some exciting new and practical solutions that will help the FSA drive its mission to create a robust, high quality IP supply chain for the benefit of its membership."

Simon Davidmann, EDA entrepreneur and VCX Board member adds, "The combination of VCX and Beach is a natural and compelling fit. The domain above RTL is very complex, unstructured and risky. But I believe that in the next 5-10 years as Moore's law terminates, the activity in the back end of the chip design process will stabilize, with much of the innovation and value in EDA moving to the front end. The front end of EDA will be the place to be and it will be a new generation of company such as Beach Solutions that leads the way."

According to Andy Travers, president and CEO of VCX Software, "Our technology and the IP portal, is a great fit with the Beach product line since our whole goal has always been to make IP creation, reuse and utilization, a more straightforward, and easier to manage process. VCX has provided leadership in pushing the development of the VSIA VCT packaging and transfer standards. Combining that expertise with Beach Solutions ESL solutions and extensive knowledge of the emerging SPIRIT standards, fuses a body of expertise and technology that meets the growing demand for practical IP-based, system level design environments that deliver real benefit. We are very excited about extending our 7+ years of corporate effort into a more complete solution for ESL design and IP reuse."

Maintaining the IP portal at www.thevcx.com

Beach is committed to maintaining, and enhancing, the VCX IP portal for the benefit of existing users and enhancing its contribution towards an improved IP supply-chain. This will include adding new levels, and views, of emerging IP compliance standards. Beach also intends to assist providers of soft IP with the provision of IP support and bus re-targeting tools enabling bus portability for IP vendors. The portal will operate as a separate business unit of Beach.

About Beach Solutions

Beach Solutions is a leading innovator of Electronic System Level (ESL) design tools. Beach's EDA tools fit into any design flow to enable hardware/software co-design from high-level system specification through the development of manufacturing tests. The company enables the creation of high quality intellectual property (IP) for system on chip (SoC), embedded software and component-based design styles. Beach's EASI-Tools(TM) are proving their value at the world's largest cell phone company, the world's largest digital signal processor (DSP) chip manufacturer, and leading systems companies. Beach Solutions, founded in 1999, is a venture funded, privately owned company with $7.2 million received to date. MTI Partners is the lead funding partner. Beach Solutions operates on a worldwide basis with its European headquarters based in Reading, United Kingdom and U.S. headquarters in San Jose, CA. See http://www.beachsolutions.com for additional information.

About VCX Software

VCX Software, Ltd. provides software tools, databases and IP information services that improve the efficiency of using semiconductor intellectual property (IP) for SoC design. The company's products, which are based on years of experience and technology development in IP management, are designed for both users and providers of IP, enabling them to better prepare, manage, market, locate, evaluate, and acquire IP. VCX Software will also continue to maintain the IP Portal at http://www.thevcx.com and its supply of information based services for other players in the semiconductor supply chain. VCX Software will continue operation as a wholly owned subsidiary of Beach Solutions Ltd.