Niigata-Seimitsu Adopts Full Suite of Berkeley Design Automation Tools.

Verifies CMOS Tuner ICs with Full SPICE Accuracy 5X-10X Faster

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Berkeley Design Automation Inc., provider of Precision Circuit Analysis[TM] technology for advanced analog and RF integrated circuits, today announced that Niigata Seimitsu Co. Ltd, a leading fabless semiconductor manufacturer for consumer electronics markets, has adopted the company's Analog FastSPICE[TM] , RF FastSPICE[TM], and PLL Noise Analyzer [TM] products. These products enable Niigata-Seimitsu to verify nanometer-scale GHz analog and RF circuits in a fraction of the time required by traditional circuit and RF simulation tools.

"Developing complex consumer TV tuner ICs is extremely challenging due to the circuit complexity required for miniaturization," said Hiroshi Miyagi, Chief Technology Officer of Niigata Seimitsu. "As we push the limits of CMOS integration, we run into substantial analog and RF circuit simulation runtime and accuracy problems with traditional tools. Berkeley Design Automation's tool suite provides us a tremendous improvement in productivity by delivering more than 5 times faster verification with full SPICE accuracy. This enables Niigata Seimitsu to accelerate our rate of innovation and deliver products to market faster in the highly competitive TV tuner market."

Berkeley Design Automation's Precision Circuit Analysis tool suite is proven on a wide range of circuits including wireless transceivers, wireline transceivers, high-speed I/Os, power regulators, sigma-delta ADCs, memory interfaces, and multi-GHz PLLs and DLLs. Analog FastSPICE delivers full SPICE accuracy, 5X-10X performance, and vastly superior DC convergence compared to traditional SPICE tools. By solving the original device equations without any approximations, abstractions, or short cuts, the tool delivers identical waveforms as traditional SPICE simulators at every node on every run. Similarly, RF FastSPICE delivers breakthrough periodic steady state (PSS) convergence and 5x-10x faster periodic analysis for highly nonlinear single-block and multi-block RF circuits. The company's PLL Noise Analyzer uses a proprietary Stochastic Nonlinear Engine [TM] to provide the industry's only closed-loop, non-approximate phase noise analysis for integer-N PLLs. The tool's accuracy is silicon validated to within 1dB relative accuracy.

"We are delighted that Niigata-Seimitsu, a leading developer of CMOS TV tuners, has selected Analog FastSPICE, RF FastSPICE, and PLL Noise Analyzer," said Ravi Subramanian, president and CEO of Berkeley Design Automation. "Niigata Seimitsu is a true innovator in the RF CMOS arena. Their selection of our full line of products is strong validation of our Precision Circuit Analysis technology and the tremendous value it can deliver to any design team developing complex semiconductors for consumer electronics."

About Berkeley Design Automation

Berkeley Design Automation Inc. is the recognized leader in advanced analog/RF verification. Its Precision Circuit Analysis technology combines the accuracy, performance, and robustness needed to verify GHz designs in nanometer-scale silicon. Berkeley Design Automation is the recipient of the 2006 Red Herring 100 North America Award, making it the first EDA company to earn such a distinction in 5 years. Founded in 2003, the company is funded by Woodside Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matsushita Electric Industrial, and NTT Corporation. For more information, see http://www.berkeley-da.com.

Analog FastSPICE, RF FastSPICE, PLL Noise Analyzer, and Precision Circuit Analysis are trademarks and Berkeley Design is a registered trademark of Berkeley Design Automation, Inc. HSPICE is a registered trademark of Synopsys Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS). Spectre is a registered trademark of Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CDNS).