Mentor Graphics First Vendor to Achieve PCI Express Intellectual Property Compliance on NitAl Platform

WILSONVILLE, Ore., May 26, 2005 - Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT) today announced it is the first third-party intellectual property (IP) vendor to achieve PCI Express specification compliance on the NitAl PExBuilder-X254 Platform. Compliance, which includes vigorous interoperability testing and validation, was achieved at the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop held in February 2005. This compliance enables designers to rapidly develop high-performance computing, storage and communications systems that support the PCI Express standard.

"Our goal is to build high quality development platforms that accelerate time-to-market," stated Nitin Sarangdhar, president NitAl. "Mentor Graphics was able to smoothly port their design to our PExBuilder-X254 technology and provide an independent validation, proving that we can offer a stable PCI Express development environment to design engineers."

NitAl PExBuilder hardware adapters are based on Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs to provide a complete development and prototyping environment for PCI Express-based designs. The PExBuilder-X254 product features a hardware evaluation board based on the state-of-the-art Virtex-II Pro (2VP40) device and a host of functions that include 2 x4 lane PCIExpress interfaces, 4MB SRAM, 256MB optional DRAM and 119 pin user IO connector. The platform supports standard PCI Express upstream & downstream connectors that allow end-users to develop and validate PCI Express endpoint/switch applications with other industry standard PCI express hardware such as motherboards, adapters and NitAl's PCI Express X4 Host emulator-device exerciser/analyzer.

Mentor Graphics' IP core, based on the PCI Express architecture, fully complies with the PCI Express standard and provides the highest quality IP that minimizes development risk and lowers overall system costs. As a result, design engineers can focus on the differentiating aspects of their design and accelerate design time with highly configurable, reusable, low-cost IP building blocks to create innovative electronic systems. Compliance of the PCI Express specification results from Mentor's long-term relationship with Xilinx, Inc.

"The PExBuilder-X254 from NitAl proved to be an ideal environment to confirm that Mentor IP is compliant with Xilinx technology," said Jimmy Awan, director of engineering, Mentor Graphics IP division. "Having a stable, high quality hardware environment was a key success factor in achieving first-pass compliance."

"We are thrilled to see that Mentor Graphics has achieved compliance on the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro platform" said Mike Frazier, director of engineering, IP Solutions at Xilinx, Inc. "Our customers will benefit from the broad availability of Mentor Graphics IP solutions and from the confidence that when they build Xilinx-based products, they can achieve rapid success."

Mentor Graphics IP Solution for PCI Express

Mentor's synthesizable core implements the PCI Express specifications in a highly configurable block that provides transaction layer, data link layer, and Media Access Controller (MAC) functionality down to the PHY interface for the PCI Express (PIPE) interface. For added flexibility, the core can implement L1 and L2 features of the ASI specification and there is an option of operation either as a root or as an endpoint with the choice made at boot time.

The Mentor Graphics IP core for PCI Express implements a rich set of features in hardware including End-to-End Cyclic Redundancy Check (ECRC), Advanced Error Reporting (AER), hot plugging, power management, crosslink, lane reversal, Message Signal Interrupt (MSI) and cut-through. Engineers are able to vary then number of lanes, virtual channels, and traffic classes. The core offers configurable buffer resources for each channel and Data Link Layer (DLL) retry.

Mentor Graphics Silicon-Proven, Standards-based Intellectual Property

Mentor Graphics offers a variety of industry-leading, standards-based IP cores that are rigorously tested and validated to provide design teams with the most reliable cores in the industry. (See press release "Mentor Graphics PCI IP Solution Passes PCI Express Compliance Tests," April 5, 2005.) Mentor's IP portfolio ranges from simple SoC building blocks, such as communications interfaces and microcontrollers, to an expansive offering of products for Ethernet, USB, Storage and PCI Express. To find out more about Mentor's intellectual product offerings, visit www.mentor.com/products/ip/. 

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of over $700 million and employs approximately 3,850 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: http://www.mentor.com/.  

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