IKOS Systems Announces IKOS' Voyager and NSIM Qualified by NEC Electronics for ASIC Sign-Off.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2000

Highest Simulation Performance, Capacity And Accuracy For

Sign-Off Provided To NEC Customers

IKOS Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:IKOS), a leading provider of design verification solutions, today announced IKOS' NSIM hardware simulation accelerator and Voyager VHDL simulation software have been qualified by NEC Electronics Inc. of Santa Clara, CA. for ASIC sign-off. Through the use of NSIM and Voyager, NEC Electronics' customers can be confident that the silicon they build will match the results of the simulations run on the IKOS products thereby boosting simulation productivity; reducing time-to-market; and increasing overall silicon quality.

Larry Melling, vice president of strategic marketing and business development for IKOS Systems noted, "The relationship between IKOS and NEC Electronics provides significant benefits to our mutual companies as well as our expanding mutual customer base. For our two companies, we gain a significant market edge by providing our customers with the highest simulation performance, capacity and accuracy for ASIC sign-off available on the market today."

"The relationship benefits mutual customers not only by providing signoff capability using IKOS' timing simulation products, but also by assuring them that we are ready to support their emulation needs." Melling continued. "This also serves to further validate the increasing importance of IKOS' design verification tools in the overall design flow from functional verification to full timing sign-off. Where hardware-assisted verification may have once occupied a niche market space, the increase in SoC complexity has resulted in it becoming a mandatory part of all state-of-the-art SoC design flows.

NEC Electronics has qualified the use of IKOS' NSIM and Voyager for its CB9, CB9_VX and CB9_VM 0.35um; CB10 and CB10_VX 0.25um and CB11 0.18um process technologies. NEC Electronics has implemented their NSIM models so that they are technology independent and thus can be used for both current and future NEC Electronics process technologies. IKOS' Voyager VHDL simulator will be available as required in NEC Electronics' OpenCAD(R) ASIC Design Toolkit which is provided to customers when they start the design process. The Toolkit will contain all the necessary interfaces to Voyager as well as very accurate NSIM models for NEC's Electronics current ASIC technologies.

"We worked closely with IKOS to create an accurate and high-performance simulation capability for our mutual customers. The strength of the relationship between NEC and IKOS assures our customers of the support they will need to verify their designs using IKOS' products. Further, the ability of our customers to use verification from functional verification to full timing sign-off will help them ensure that their designs will work right the first time," said Kazu Yamada, general manager, for NEC Electronics' Technology Foundation Group.

ABOUT NSIM AND VOYAGER

NSIM is a plug-in, mixed-level simulation accelerator that delivers the greatest speed, capacity, modeling capability and ease of use available. NSIM accelerates memory, gate-level logic, and switch-level logic, achieving more than 3,000 simulated clocks per second. Since NSIM co-simulates with VHDL, LMC hardware and software models, C models, and Verilog HDL models, verification can begin early in the design process when most of the design is still modeled behaviorally. Voyager is a high performance VHDL simulator. The Voyager Series is a complete mixed-level VHDL simulation platform offering high-performance support for behavioral, RTL and full-timing gate verification.

OTHER IKOS PRODUCTS

In addition to NSIM and Voyager, IKOS also provides the high-power, high-capacity VLE-5M emulator. The VLE-5M has a small form factor and operates on 120 V power without special environmental facilities. The system provides a very easy interface to customers' target environments. Further, the patented Virtual Wires compilation technology incorporated in VLE-5M automates many of the tasks that have traditionally made emulation difficult. Typical emulation speeds of a megahertz and the ability to recompile netlist changes in less than two hours give users a very powerful verification environment. The IKOS 100% visibility model gives users a very robust debug facility without sacrificing emulation speed. With its unique technology, IKOS is able to deliver the industry's lowest emulation prices. The basic cost of the system starts at $0.37/ASIC gate. Overall emulation capacity is 4.5 million ASIC gates plus 48 MB of memory. This low cost is combined with the ease of use, no specialized facilities and fast compile times of VLE. With this cost-performance ratio, users can achieve double the emulation capacity over previously offered emulation solutions.

ABOUT IKOS

IKOS Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:IKOS) is a technology leader in high-performance design verification solutions including hardware and software simulation for language-based design, logic emulation for system integration and compatibility verification, and verification services. The company's mission is to help customers realize their high-complexity electronic systems through innovative design verification solutions. IKOS has direct sales operation in North America, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and India, and a distribution network throughout Asia-Pacific and Israel. The corporate headquarters is at 19050 Pruneridge Ave., Cupertino, Calif., 95014, [phone]. For more information, visit http://www.ikos.com.

IKOS, NSIM, Voyager and VirtuaLogic are trademarks of IKOS Systems. All other brand or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and should be treated as such.