Mentor Graphics and Xilinx Announce Availability of FPGA OpenMORE.

Business/High Tech Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2001

Mentor Graphics Corp. (Nasdaq:MENT) and Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq:XLNX) today announced the availability of FPGA OpenMORE, a reference assessment program and spreadsheet for evaluating the reusability of IP used in large, multi-million gate FPGA designs.

After six months of beta testing, the FPGA OpenMORE program is now available to the semiconductor design community with endorsements from trial users such as CAST and Telecom Italia Lab. The FPGA OpenMORE program is available for download at http://www.openmore.com.

Mentor Graphics and Synopsys co-authored the widely used Reuse Methodology Manual (RMM) and co-founded the OpenMORE program. FPGA OpenMORE is an extension of the RMM that was authored by Xilinx. In an OpenMORE users' survey conducted in January 2001, respondents identified an FPGA enhancement to OpenMORE as a priority. FPGA OpenMORE provides an assessment program similar to OpenMORE, enabling companies to define a reuse strategy that allows design teams to work smoothly between both the ASIC and FPGA approaches.

"The collaboration between Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and Xilinx will help accelerate the acceptance and industry-wide usage of this newest addition to OpenMORE," said Mark Aaldering, senior director of the IP Solutions division at Xilinx. "FPGA OpenMORE is a critical step in the accelerated adoption of FPGAs as the next system-on-chip (SoC) platform. It is critical that any rating system used for FPGA SoC design reuse not only be standardized for ASICs and FPGAs, but also for different FPGA technologies."

Pierre Bricaud, co-author of the Reuse Methodology Manual and director of marketing for the Inventra Intellectual Property division of Mentor Graphics said, "Trial customers praise the availability of a practical, easy-to-use reference guide for standardizing IP reuse practices for FPGA design. The OpenMORE program continues to achieve success because of our ability to continually add new measurability criteria in response to changing design paradigms."

Since its release in 1999, OpenMORE has rapidly become the standard assessment program for reuse in many segments of the SoC industry, including systems companies, semiconductor vendors, and IP providers. The most common uses for the system are for developing reuse infrastructure, for evaluating intellectual property licensed from internal and external IP providers and for developing intellectual property for the commercial IP market.

Beta Customer Endorses FPGA OpenMORE Availability

"FPGA OpenMORE gives us the consistency we need to deliver great IP products. It ensures uniformity throughout our international development network, and it makes customers even more confident about always getting high-quality, easy-to-reuse cores from CAST," said Newton Abdalla, vice president of the Intellectual Property division at CAST, a third-party IP provider that has evaluated FPGA OpenMORE. "The creation of FPGA OpenMORE with FPGA-specific guidelines is an excellent example of how industry leaders can cooperate to further the advancement of system-level design."

"Customers in the networking and telecom market push for effective, flexible and customizable products: reuse and prototyping are the keys for succeeding this challenge. In this scenario, telecom companies need procedures, approaches to refer to, both when developing and using IP cores," said Maura Turolla, head of the design and IP library area at Telecom Italia Lab, System on Chip division. "The extension of the OpenMORE program to FPGA technology defined by Xilinx and Mentor Graphics empowers our product VIPLibrary(R) and assures our customers of the high reuse degree of our soft IP cores and the perfect portability in the FPGA environment. Moreover, both customers and high quality IP providers ask for unified metrics guaranteed by a neutral third party in order to design and develop advanced solutions for the telecom industry."

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at http://www.xilinx.com.

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation (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, Oregon 97070-7777; Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com.

Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.