Cadence Delivers New Allegro Design Workbench; New Software Suite Combines MatrixOne and Cadence Technology and Offers Tight Integration With Cadence PCB Design Tools.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN) today announced the release of the Allegro Design Workbench software suite, a new family of products for the Cadence(R) Allegro(R) system interconnect design platform that utilize advanced MatrixOne, Inc. (Nasdaq:MONE) product lifecycle management technology. The delivery of this software suite, which can boost engineering productivity up to 50 percent, marks the formal entry by Cadence into the collaborative design and library data management market. Electronic design engineers throughout the design chain will benefit from the existing Cadence and MatrixOne alliance that brings tightly integrated technology from both companies into the Allegro Design Workbench. In contrast to competitive products in the market, this integrated solution is specifically designed for board design groups, enabling cross-team collaboration plus design and library management.

LTX Corporation, a leading semiconductor test solutions company, has completed its final evaluation of the Allegro Design Workbench. "Our ability to develop and deliver innovative products that quickly reach our customers and the market is critical -- Cadence solutions are an important part of this process," said Neil Kelly, chief technology officer and vice president of corporate marketing at LTX. "Allegro Design Workbench will provide enhanced control over our process and data and seamlessly integrate with our other business systems to bring all necessary data to the engineer's desktop. This allows us to optimize decision-making during the design process and further reduce our design times."

"Allegro Design Workbench connects design engineers to the extended enterprise through an easy-to-use interface that integrates our Allegro platform design tools with library and design data management," said Charlie Giorgetti, corporate vice president and general manager of the Silicon-Package-Board business unit at Cadence. "The release of this product is a testament to our ongoing relationship with MatrixOne and will have a positive impact on the way board designers do their work."

Allegro Design Workbench directly meets the needs of design engineers by providing a collaborative development environment across the design chain. A quick look-up of approved parts contained in the company parts library through a parametric search ensures that preferred components are being used. Quickly finding preferred components means significant time savings when researching parts for a design. As bills of materials are created, they can be easily shared with the extended design team, procurement and electronic manufacturing services providers. This provides the ability to schedule parts delivery in advance of production, taking advantage of increased component volume purchasing power by eliminating unnecessary duplicate components and suppliers. Additionally, component creation, validation and distribution mechanisms ensure everyone in the design process is using known-good library data to build their designs.

Although newly released to the market, the Allegro Design Workbench has been in use for more than a decade at Thales Group on hundreds of projects. No other board design and library management solution has been in use for as long, with as many projects.

"From experience we know that it can be very complicated to find the right parts, at the right time, for a design," said Yves Boccon-Gibod, hardware engineering manager at Thales Research and Technology in France. "The Allegro Design Workbench makes preferred parts easy to find and incorporate into our designs. Combining known-good libraries with information from our ERP, and bringing this directly to the engineer's desktop, has increased our engineers' productivity by 25 percent. The workbench also provides improvements to our methodology and design practices along with tight integration to Cadence design solutions. As a result, we have achieved improved quality, reduced risk, and enhanced engineering productivity up to 50 percent."

An easy launch function for design and verification tools at each stage in the design flow promotes common processes across the enterprise. Allegro Design Workbench allows designers to manage work-in-progress data, making that data accessible to members of the design team for review, mark-up and collaboration. This enables secure and effective data sharing across the design chain with internal and external partners. As multiple design revisions are created, a complete history is stored, enabling design engineers to go back to previous stages of the design if and when necessary.

"As a company, we are committed to extending our leadership position in the global electronics marketplace, and our relationship with Cadence is a critical element of this strategy," said John Fleming, vice president and general manager of the electronics business unit at MatrixOne. "The delivery of the Allegro Design Workbench provides our mutual customers with a solution that will allow them to increase engineering productivity and reduce cycle times. With the design of electronic products becoming increasingly complex, the Allegro Design Workbench provides the industry with an integrated solution for driving collaboration across design groups and provides a foundation that allows companies to adopt and benefit from a broader PLM strategy moving forward."

Pricing and Availability

The Cadence Allegro Design Workbench is available now and currently in use by reference customers.

About Cadence

Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design technologies, methodology services, and design services. Cadence solutions are 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 approximately 4,800 employees and 2003 revenues of approximately $1.1 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services is available at www.cadence.com.

Cadence, the Cadence logo and Allegro are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.