Mentor Graphics Introduces HDL Designer Series.

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

WILSONVILLE, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 2001

Comprehensive Tool Suite for Design Management, Analysis and

Documentation Delivers Unparalleled Flexibility and Ease-of-Use

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Nasdaq:MENT) today introduced the HDL Designer Series(TM), a new family of point tools for complex Verilog, VHDL or mixed-language design.

HDL Designer Series products cover all aspects of the design entry and management process: HDL Pilot(TM) for design management; HDL Detective(TM) for design analysis; HDL Author(TM) for text and graphical editing and documentation; and HDL Designer(TM) for complete point tool functionality in a single solution. Combining best-in-class technologies of the Mentor Graphics(R) Renoir(R) HDL graphical entry tool with technology recently acquired from Escalade, HDL Designer Series is the EDA industry's most complete tool suite for HDL design, analysis and management.

"HDL Designer Series opens up new markets for Mentor Graphics in HDL Design," said Dr. Walden C. Rhines, chairman and chief executive officer for Mentor Graphics. "HDL designers working on ASIC/FPGA systems-on-chip (SoC) now have the industry's most flexible and easy-to-use tool set for design entry, management and visualization, whether using individual point tools or a complete design flow."

HDL Designer Series offers a design staff unmatched flexibility, accommodating a team member's design preference, whether it's working with HDL source code, common graphical representations, or any combination of the two, without compromising the ability to monitor and manage data in a common environment. Extensive Intellectual Property (IP) reuse and multiple site design teams drive the need for a standard design environment. Teams can choose to standardize on individual tools from the HDL Designer Series family, or get the most flexibility from HDL Designer, which offers all of the features found in HDL Pilot, HDL Detective and HDL Author in one comprehensive package. This enables full leverage of existing IP, accelerated time-to-market and reduced development costs company-wide.

"Solo engineers, worldwide teams, text experts and novice HDL designers may be divided by design methodology, but they are united by a common goal -- productivity," said Valerie Rachko, marketing manager for HDL Designer Series. "Our new HDL Designer Series tool suite accommodates virtually any style of HDL design, so all designers now have access to our best-in-class technology."

HDL Pilot - The Manager

One of the most challenging aspects of design management is ensuring that designs can be consistently and efficiently reused throughout an organization. HDL Pilot provides a common cockpit from which all design data can be managed, making it easy to transfer design data within a common reuse environment. Its easy-to-use interface allows designers to navigate through and manage project data generated in complex Verilog, VHDL and mixed-language designs processes. HDL Pilot eliminates the cost of developing and maintaining a homegrown design environment and frees design staffs from creating and maintaining scripts, dramatically improving the cost/performance ratio for each engineer on a team.

HDL Detective - The Analyzer

Current design reuse methodologies are not being maximized, with teams wasting valuable time trying to locate hundreds of HDL files necessary to understand the design structure of a reusable block. HDL Detective simplifies documentation creation and maintenance at every step of the FPGA, ASIC and SoC design cycle, featuring a push-button process for reusing legacy or commercial IP designs. Designers can use HDL Detective to visualize the current state of a design and automatically generate documentation for newly developed HDL. This process translates HDL to diagrammatic representations, making it easy for engineers to understand HDL from a foreign source.

HDL Author - The Creator

HDL Author allows design teams to create complex systems with consistent design quality and style. To accommodate the fullest range of design preferences, HDL Author is available in three flavors for designers using pure HDL source code, graphical representations, or a combination of both.

-- HDL Author Text includes a variety of editors offering simple

to sophisticated design creation features that automatically

generates high-quality, well-structured HDL for any level of

design complexity.

A challenge for designers is how to rapidly describe the

interfaces for new blocks of functionality and to interconnect

reusable IP blocks. With large designs, it is very difficult

to visualize and document a piece of interconnect code buried

in thousands of lines of HDL. HDL Author Text features

Interface Based Design(TM) (IBD(TM)) to solve the interconnect

creation problem. IBD is a new, patent-pending concept in

text-based entry that simplifies interconnect creation

problems by displaying design interconnect structures in an

easy-to-view and compact tabular format. This tabular editing

environment allows designers to capture a given level of

hierarchy piece by piece, simplifying the creation and

documentation process.

-- HDL Author Graphics features an intuitive, graphical methodology that is
ideally suited to designers or organizations that are migrating to HDL
methodologies. HDL Author Graphics includes a block editor, state machine
editor, flow chart editor and truth table editor.

-- HDL Author Pro includes the combined features of both HDL Author Text and
HDL Author Graphics to provide complete creative control.

HDL Designer - Complete Point Tool Functionality in One Solution

HDL Designer is a complete entry and management solution that includes all the point tools of the HDL Designer Series. It allows companies to standardize on a toolset that can be used to share designs across multiple locations, improving and enhancing communication, design reuse and documentation company-wide.

Pricing and Availability

HDL Designer Series is available in several configurations, including bundles with ModelSim(R) simulation. Prices start at $4,000 for a node-locked perpetual license. Mentor Graphics offers both perpetual and term seats as standard pricing models. All products in the HDL Designer Series are available now. For more information, please visit www.mentor.com/hdldesigner.

About Mentor Graphics Corp.

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Nasdaq:MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products and consulting services for the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of nearly $600 million and employs approximately 2,750 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Ore. 97070-7777; Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com.

Mentor Graphics, Renoir and ModelSim are registered trademarks of Mentor Graphics Corporation. HDL Designer Series, HDL Pilot, HDL Detective, HDL Author, HDL Designer, Interface Based Design and IBD are trademarks of Mentor Graphics. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.