Cadence Design Services Announces the SurePath COT Solution; Reduces Risk and Investment Associated with COT Adoption.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2000

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), the world's leading supplier of electronic design products and services, has announced the availability of the SurePath COT Solution - an IC design and manufacturing supply-chain solution targeted at electronic systems and fabless semiconductor companies. The SurePath COT Solution tightly integrates the critical components of the customer owned tooling (COT) supply chain - IC design services, libraries, IP, fabrication, packaging and testing - affording customers immediate access to a robust COT capability. Consequently, customers avoid the risk and investment inherent during in-house COT adoption. The SurePath COT Solution was developed in collaboration with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the leader in IC fabrication; Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), a leader in IC packaging and testing; and Artisan Components and NurLogic Design, leaders in IC libraries and intellectual property.

Cadence Design Services and its supply-chain partners have invested heavily to integrate their respective offerings and provide a robust, predictable path from design to production. This includes the formalization of qualification sign-off procedures between Cadence(R) and each of the other parties, and the development of a design-to-manufacture qualification vehicle for each target-process technology. The result is the most tightly integrated, predictable, independent path to COT silicon available today.

"Many companies find the benefits of a COT approach to IC design and manufacturing very compelling," said Bob Wiederhold, senior vice president of Design Services at Cadence. "But they hesitate to move to COT, because they lack sufficient internal expertise to do the design or manage the COT supply chain. The SurePath COT Solution solves both of these problems and makes a COT approach accessible and attractive to a much broader set of companies."

"A growing number of companies are outsourcing IC design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, and IP development," said Ron Norris, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and sales at TSMC. "Therefore, it is increasingly important for key design service, EDA, IP and other third-party suppliers to tightly integrate their tools and capabilities with TSMC's industry-standard process technologies. The SurePath COT Solution provides our customers with the world-class capabilities of each supply-chain partner and the benefits of a tightly integrated solution - a combination that drives enhanced time-to-market for their products."

"We believe SurePath COT offers a more streamlined process, tighter-linked know-how and, therefore, better time-to-market, quality and cost management to our customers," said Tien Wu, vice president of worldwide marketing, ASE Group. "It is ASE's commitment to bring the highest value to our customers through this partnership."

"We are excited about participating in Cadence's SurePath COT Solution," said Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Artisan Components, Inc. "Artisan has hundreds of COT users today, and we believe that many will benefit from the integrated flow and the extraordinary supply chain they can get through SurePath COT."

"It is important to NurLogic customers that we deliver not only the highest performance IP, but a product that is reliable and repeatable through qualified COT solutions," said Lisa Lipscomp, vice president of marketing at NurLogic Design. "NurLogic works closely with Cadence to ensure that our products are fully integrated into the SurePath COT Solution."

The SurePath COT Solution is available immediately for digital, mixed-signal and analog designs, in process technologies down to 0.18um, and has been proven on over fifty designs of leading-edge complexity. Clients can engage SurePath COT design services with confidence at any level - specification, functional or physical design.

In addition, Cadence has a roadmap to interface leading third-party IP cores with the SurePath COT Solution to support system-on-chip (SOC) COT manufacturing through TSMC. Short-term plans include cores from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. and DSP Group, companies with which Cadence has extensive design experience. Cadence also has developed modular integration platforms to speed IP-based SOC design.

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 approximately 5,000 employees and 1999 annual revenue of $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 may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.cadence.com.

About TSMC

TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology, library and IP options and other leading-edge foundry services. The company operates seven eight-inch wafer fabs and two six-inch wafer fabs. In addition, TSMC has begun construction of a $1.2 billion joint-venture fab with Philips Semiconductor, which is scheduled to open in Singapore in 2000, and recently broke ground for the its first 12-inch wafer fabrication facility. In 2000, TSMC expects to have capacity for nearly 3.4 million 8-inch equivalent wafers. Fabrication processes offered by TSMC include CMOS logic, mixed-mode, volatile and non-volatile memory, and BiCMOS. TSMC's corporate headquarters are in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.tsmc.com.tw.

About ASE

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Group is a leading supplier of semiconductor contract manufacturing solutions. The company provides a complete set of design, prototyping, and manufacturing services, including front-end testing, wafer sorting, IC packaging and assembly, module testing, system-level assembly, and logistics support. Founded in 1986, ASE Group has achieved over $2.0 billion of consolidated revenue in 1999. With over 18,000 employees, ASE Group has sales offices and manufacturing facilities all round the world. The company is headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. The Americas and Europe headquarters is in San Jose, California. Further information about ASE may be found at http://www.aseus.com.

About Artisan

Founded in 1991, Artisan Components, Inc., (Nasdaq: ARTI) provides high-quality silicon intellectual property (IP) to the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers. The company's Process-Perfect(tm) products, including embedded memories, SAGE(tm) and SAGE-X(tm) standard cells and Integral(tm) I/Os, are tuned to each manufacturer's process. Semiconductor manufacturers, in turn, provide these products to their design customers so that they may achieve the full speed, density and low power potential of the semiconductor process. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.artisan.com.

About NurLogic

NurLogic Design, Inc. provides a broad range of semiconductor technology products (including Foundation IP) such as standard cell libraries, specialty I/Os and embedded memory cores; higher-level analog and mixed-signal IP cores; SOC Design Services and ASSP design. NurLogic is a privately held corporation. Further information on NurLogic can be found on the web at http://www.nurlogic.com.

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