Berkeley Design Automation Selected by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. for Digital-RF Chip Design Platform.

Partnership Brings World's Leading Consumer Electronics Company Significantly Faster Verification of Wireless ICs

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Berkeley Design Automation, Inc., provider of Precision Circuit Analysis[TM] technology for advanced analog and RF integrated circuits, today announced that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE:MC), the world's leading consumer electronics company, has entered into a partnership for analog/RF and mixed-signal design verification for Matsushita's Digital-RF Chip Design Platform. The partnership is based on the technology from Berkeley Design Automation's Analog FastSPICE[TM] and RF FastSPICE[TM] tools which provide full SPICE accuracy, with 5x-10x faster speed and 5x-10x higher effective capacity than traditional circuit and RF simulation. Matsushita's design teams will use this capability to further its lead in complex digital-RF ICs for mobile communications and digital TV.

"Digital-RF designs are a differentiated and critical component of our consumer wireless electronics products," said Dr. Hiroaki Kosugi, Director Digital-RF Development Office, Corporate R&D at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. "The current situation for developing products based on digital-RF technology involves many silicon re-spins - resulting in higher design costs, delays in volume production, and over-design. The situation must change, and a major breakthrough is needed in the design platform for digital-RF IC designs."

"Berkeley Design Automation is an essential partner for us in achieving success in the development of digital-RF designs," Dr. Kosugi added. "Designers face enormous challenges in verifying digital-RF mixed-signal integrated circuits in terms of accuracy, performance, and capacity. Berkeley Design Automation has achieved the significant reduction in verification time with full SPICE accuracy - and the ability to run critical full-circuit verification for a variety of mixed-signal digital-RF circuits."

Analog FastSPICE and RF FastSPICE use Berkeley Design Automation's proprietary Precision Circuit Analysis technology to deliver full SPICE accuracy, 5x to 10x faster and with 5x to 10x higher effective capacity than traditional circuit and RF simulation tools. By solving the original device equations without any approximations, abstractions, or short cuts, these products deliver full silicon accuracy at every node on every run. The products are already proven on a wide range of circuits including wireless and wireline transceivers (including RF-CMOS), high-speed I/Os, power regulators, LCD-TV source drivers, memory interfaces, PLLs (phase-locked loops), DLLs (delay-locked loops), sigma-delta ADC (analog-to-digital converters), and memories.

"It's a significant milestone for BDA to be selected by Matsushita as a partner in the development and deployment of their Digital-RF design flow," said Ravi Subramanian, president and CEO of Berkeley Design Automation. "As the leading consumer electronics company in the world, Matsushita had stringent requirements for the design and verification of a wide range of consumer product ICs based on their next-generation digital-RF technology. The partnership between Matsushita and Berkeley Design Automation in this area further validates the impact our technology is having in enabling next-generation analog and RF circuit design."

About Berkeley Design Automation

Berkeley Design Automation, Inc. is the recognized leader in advanced analog/RF verification. Its Precision Circuit Analysis technology combines the accuracy, performance, and capacity needed to verify GHz designs in nanometer-scale silicon. Berkeley Design Automation is the recipient of EDN Magazine's 2006 Innovation Award and the 2006 Red Herring 100 North America Award, making it the first analog and RF EDA company to be honored with either exclusive award in five years. Founded in 2003, the company is funded by Woodside Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., and NTT Corporation. For more information, see http://www.berkeley-da.com.

Analog FastSPICE, RF FastSPICE, PLL Noise Analyzer, and Precision Circuit Analysis are trademarks and Berkeley Design is a registered trademark of Berkeley Design Automation, Inc. HSPICE is a registered trademark of Synopsys Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS). Spectre is a registered trademark of Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CDNS). Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.