Cadence Announces NEC Electronics' Support for Envisia Synthesis and PKS; Company Gears Up for Customers' 0.18-Micron Design Challenges.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 1999--

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), the world's leading supplier of electronic design products and services, today announced that NEC Electronics, Inc., as part of its semicustom design flow, will provide immediate library support for its CB-11 and CB-C1O cell-based technology for the Cadence Envisia Ambit synthesis tool.

NEC Electronics will also provide support for the Cadence Envisia(TM) with physically knowledgeable synthesis (PKS) technology by the middle of next year.

NEC Electronics' latest CB-11 family of 0.18-micron and 0.15-micron CMOS process technology features a maximum of 34 million gates. At this level of integration, synthesis performance is key to achieving success. To meet this challenge, NEC Electronics has tested and integrated the Cadence Envisia Ambit synthesis into its design flow.

"We have rigorously evaluated the Envisia Ambit synthesis tool and we are quite pleased with its optimization, capacity, and runtime performance. Our announcement of support is timely, since we are seeing increased demand for Envisia Ambit libraries," said Hiroshi Sakuma, assistant general manager of the Technology Foundation Group for NEC Electronics.

In addition, NEC Electronics has collaborated with Cadence as an early adopter of PKS technology. Extensive performance and correlation testing have been completed and the company is now integrating PKS into its design flow. "PKS has demonstrated excellent optimization and correlation with post-routed results. Our results show that PKS is superior at delivering a one-pass, timing-closure solution," commented Sakuma.

"We are delighted that NEC Electronics is supporting the Cadence Envisia synthesis product line. This joint effort will benefit our mutual customers," said Jeff Roane, director, synthesis product marketing for Cadence.

The Envisia Synthesis Product Line

Envisia Ambit synthesis enables customers to synthesize multi-million-gate designs rapidly with superior results. Envisia Ambit also has a built-in, high-capacity, high-performance timing analysis tool that enables productive timing closure. The distributed synthesis feature built into Envisia Ambit synthesis leverages modern networked compute environments to dramatically reduce synthesis runtime for large designs.

Envisia synthesis with PKS technology is a revolutionary synthesis product that brings physical timing accuracy to synthesis. With physical accuracy in synthesis, timing closure iterations between synthesis and place-and-route are eliminated resulting in greater productivity and denser, higher performance circuits.

Pricing and Availability

Cadence Envisia Ambit synthesis is available for UNIX-based workstations from Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. Envisia Ambit synthesis is priced at a U.S. list price of $25,000. Envisia synthesis with PKS technology is priced at a U.S. list price of $250,000.

About Cadence

Cadence is the largest supplier of software products, methodology services, and design services used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronics-based products. With more than 4,000 employees and 1998 annual sales of $1.3 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world.

The company is headquartered in San Jose, and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.cadence.com.

Note to Editors: Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All others are properties of their holders.