STMicroelectronics and Synopsys Announce Partnership To Develop Industry-Standard Tool Platform for Design Reuse

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STMicroelectronics and Synopsys Announce Partnership To Develop Industry-Standard Tool Platform for Design Reuse

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.----Nov. 22, 1999--Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS), the technology leader for complex IC design, and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers, today announced a multi-year partnership to jointly develop a complete design reuse tool platform providing a technology and methodology infrastructure for reusable IP generation, certification, packaging and instantiation.

This platform will enable ST designers to significantly reduce the cycle time for implementing system-on-a-chip (SoC) products. With this new approach, based on a precise set of design for reuse guidelines and with reuse directives, the two companies expect, within one to two years, to be setting new benchmarks for the semiconductor industry in SoC design productivity and time to market.

To enable this system-level integration design approach centered around IP reuse, STMicroelectronics began developing in 1997 a comprehensive set of standards and guidelines known as the ``ST Blue-Book.''

These standards are the basis of a design methodology to facilitate the integration of multiple IP cores onto a single chip, such as ST's highly successful Omega family, which has been developed for the set-top box market.

The design reuse tool platform, named Quartet, being jointly developed by STMicroelectronics and Synopsys, will incorporate and enforce these standards, and automatically guide designers in creating and reusing system-level intellectual property (IP) according to the ``Blue Book'' methodology.

``STMicroelectronics has a tradition of forming partnerships with leading customers and suppliers in order to continually deliver the most effective silicon solutions,'' stated Joel Monnier, corporate vice president and director of Central R&D at STMicroelectronics. ``Thus we are very pleased to be working with Synopsys to develop Quartet.''

``After making a significant investment to develop the ST Blue Book, we realized that our designers could better and more rapidly adopt these rules by automating many of the associated design flow steps and required checks to ensure that the guidelines were being followed by construction,'' said Roberto Fantechi, STMicroelectronics' vice-president of Design Reuse.

``After discussions with the leading EDA vendors, we decided to partner with Synopsys, because we believed that the design reuse tools and methodologies they had developed were the most advanced. In particular, we liked the capabilities and potential of Synopsys coreBuilder, which we felt was a good foundation upon which to build the Quartet platform.''

Synopsys had been developing the coreBuilder product for over two years, and was actively looking for a lead-customer to drive future product development. ``We are very excited to partner with ST to evolve coreBuilder into an industry-standard platform for building systems-on-a-chip,'' said John Chilton, vice president and general manager of Synopsys' Design Reuse Business Unit. ``So far, we have had great results using coreBuilder to create and deliver Synopsys' DesignWare Foundation IP to Synopsys customers.

``To carry the tool to the next level, we recognized the need to be exposed to the real challenges of SoC design, and to work closely with a leading semiconductor company having advanced system-on-a-chip capability and an effective strategy in place for design reuse on a corporate scale. STMicroelectronics has all of these characteristics and has been a very important customer of ours for many years.''

``We anticipate the new design approaches derived from this partnership will significantly change the way we and our customers build embedded systems in the future,'' added Fantechi.

``The availability of a complete design reuse automation platform, together with the ability to readily acquire IP from different divisions in the company as well as third parties will dramatically increase the level of efficiency and productivity in SoC design for ourselves and our customers.''

About STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics (formerly SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics) is a global independent semiconductor company, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on the ParisBourse and on the Milan Stock Exchange.

The Company designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronics applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.

About Synopsys

Synopsys Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) is a leading supplier of electronic design automation (EDA) solutions to the global electronics market. The company provides comprehensive design technologies to creators of advanced integrated circuits, electronic systems and systems on a chip.

Synopsys also provides consulting services and support to its customers to streamline the overall design process and accelerate time-to-market. Additional information about Synopsys is available at http://www.synopsys.com.

Note to Editors: Synopsys and DesignWare are registered trademarks of Synopsys Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.

Contact:
     Synopsys, Inc.
     Lee Flanagin, 650/584-4903
     flanagin@synopsys.com