Cadence Gains Momentum in IC Packaging With Advanced Packaging Ensemble Suite.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 1999--

Wide Range of Major Chipmakers and Foundries Have Selected Tool

Suite Targeted at Optimizing System Performance Across Silicon,

Package and Board

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN) today announced that the growing number of customers using its Advanced Packaging Ensemble(TM) software to solve key integrated circuit (IC) packaging design challenges has helped Cadence gain the lead in the packaging market. According to the "1998 EDA Market Trends" report published December 7, 1998, by GartnerGroup's Dataquest, Cadence holds a 38-percent share of this market, which include packaging, multichip module (MCM), and hybrid layout tools.(1)

Since its introduction in May 1998, more than 35 major semiconductor and packaging foundries have made Advanced Packaging Ensemble - part of the Intrica(TM) family of IC packaging and printed-circuit board (PCB) tools a key component of their packaging strategies. These firms include: Analog Devices, Inc.; IBM Corporation; LSI Logic Corporation; Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector; and Siliconware Precision Industries Co., Ltd. (SPIL).

"We've seen a substantial cycle-time reduction since we began using Advanced Packaging Ensemble to design chip packages," said Ken Rhyner, package design manager with Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector. "Most of our offshore suppliers have included the product in their software portfolios, enabling us to reduce our cycle times with them as well. In addition, transitioning from our previous solution was relatively painless. We were able to ramp up and see productivity within 30 days of bringing the tool online."

Solution Integrated with Electrical Modeling Tools

Advanced Packaging Ensemble is fully integrated, via an agreement announced in February 1999, with Pacific Numerix Corporation's extraction and modeling environment, Turbo Package Analyzer, and its underlying three-dimensional (3-D) parasitic extraction engine, Parasitic Parameters. The resulting solution is aimed at electrical and physical designers of high-performance IC packages.

Don Thomas, packaging design manager for IBM, cited Advanced Packaging Ensemble as a factor contributing to IBM's ability to speed up packaging design time. "Previously, we had developed our own packaging tools, which we were using with the Cadence Allegro(R) design system," said Thomas. "Advanced Packaging Ensemble has integrated a lot of that internal functionality, reducing our need to support the home-grown tools, and helping us to speed up our design process. This has proved to be a great advantage for us and our customers."

Paul Musto, product marketing manager for IC packaging technologies at Cadence, noted, "The packaging market is growing rapidly, particularly with respect to the complexity of the packages required for emerging chip solutions. The rapid growth in revenue and customer engagements that we have experienced with Advanced Packaging Ensemble underscore our belief that we have come up with the industry's best solution to help package designers meet these challenges. Our unique silicon-package-board solution - which expands both the physical and electrical domains - has been the key to our success."

Advanced Packaging Ensemble Meets Design Challenges

The Advanced Packaging Ensemble suite provides a complete environment for package design with constraint-driven physical layout, electrical modeling and analysis of package and package-to-PCB considerations, and a common design database throughout the development flow. It addresses the requirements of emerging IC packaging options, such as high-density ball-grid arrays (BGAs), chip-scale packages (CSPs) and direct chip attach (DCAs).

Advanced Packaging Ensemble is available in both Unix and Windows NT versions at a starting U.S. price of $45,000.

About Cadence

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. 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 $1.2 billion, Cadence is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities located around the world. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.cadence.com.

(1) GartnerGroup's Dataquest, reprinted with permission, July 1999.

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