Cadence Announces Development of OVM Verification IP for USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0 High-Speed Protocols

New Products Strengthen Cadence VIP Leadership by Extending Industry's Broadest Portfolio With Key Emerging Protocols

November 17, 2008 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation, today announced the planned first quarter 2009 availability of new Open Verification Methodology (OVM) verification IP (VIP) for two key high-speed protocols: USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0. The new Cadence® VIP will help increase productivity, predictability and quality for users designing these new high-speed serial protocols into IP or system on chip (SoC). This announcement comes one month after Cadence announced it had expanded by five times its VIP portfolio to now include over 30 standard protocols.

"We are enthusiastic about Cadence's early support of SuperSpeed USB," said Jeff Ravencraft, president and chairman, USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). "By improving the speed and reducing the effort required for pre-silicon verification, Cadence's verification IP will help speed the delivery of USB 3.0 protocol-compliant IP and SOCs to the market."

"The need for metric-driven highly automated OVM VIP is clearly growing, and Cadence is investing significantly to satisfy this demand and deliver VIP to the early protocol adopters at the earliest possible time," said Dave Tokic, director of product marketing at Cadence. "Verification teams benefit from the depth of Cadence's VIP portfolio for verifying compliance to leading-edge protocols. We are confident that our new products for SuperSpeed USB and PCI Express 3.0 will go a long way in providing these engineers with the productivity, predictability and quality they are seeking."

In addition to offering the greatest breadth in OVM testbench VIP, Cadence provides a comprehensive set of VIP classes applicable to block, module, chip and system level verification. This includes assertion-based and transaction-based acceleration and emulation rate adapters, which are branded as Cadence SpeedBridge® products.

Availability

The new VIP for SuperSpeed USB and PCI Express 3.0 will be available in the first quarter of 2009.

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware, methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. Cadence reported 2007 revenues of approximately $1.6 billion, and has approximately 5,100 employees. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.