Magma Announces Support for Faraday's Structured ASIC Platforms

Complete RTL-to-GDSII flow proven using Magma software and Faraday’s MPCA Technology

SANTA CLARA, California and HSINCHU, Taiwan – May 18, 2004 -- Magma® Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA), a provider of chip design solutions and Faraday Technology Corporation (TAIEX:3035), a global provider of silicon-proven IPs and ASIC design services today announced the availability of a proven RTL-to-GDSII design flow for structured ASIC designs. Magma’s RTL-to-GDSII IC design flow has been adapted to support the creation of floorplans, physical synthesis, legalized placement, clock tree synthesis, and power routing for Faraday’s Metal Programmable Cell Array (MPCA) structured ASIC platforms. With the availability of this flow, Magma can now provide a single environment for the entire spectrum of IC implementation platforms including standard cell and structured ASIC designs, as well as programmable logic devices.

Magma and Faraday have been working together to streamline the process and have already successfully implemented designs. In these initial designs the fully automated flow was proven to exceed the design timing requirements by 10 percent with minimal run time.

“We are very pleased with the efforts to integrate Magma’s existing design tools into Faraday’s MPCA design kits,” said Hsin Wang, R & D Associate VP at Faraday. “Our recent collaboration has already resulted in significant performance and runtime improvements. This cooperation with Magma is accelerating Faraday’s global leadership in the structured ASIC market place.”

“Magma’s solution takes full advantage of configurable combinatorial, sequential, and drive cell structures and their flexible ratios. The end result is a predictable flow that utilizes MPCA cell- and routing-friendly architecture to achieve a higher quality of results,” said Dr. Jason Cong, chief technologist for Structured and Programmable Solutions at Magma. “We’re very pleased to extend our partnership with Faraday to support this important technology in structured ASIC designs. By combining the advantages of ASIC and FPGA architectures and tools, Faraday’s MPCA technology delivers high performance and density with fast turnaround time and low NRE costs.”

About Faraday Technology Corporation
Faraday Technology Corporation is a leading silicon IP and fables ASIC vendor. The company’s broad IP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, DSPs, high speed I/Os, and many others. With more than 500 employees and 2003 revenues of $111 million, Faraday is the largest fabless ASIC company in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Headquartered in Taiwan, Faraday provides customers with a global network of service and support offices, including the U.S., Japan, Europe, and China. For more information, including a complete list of available IPs, please visit:  http://www.faraday-tech.com

About Magma
Magma provides leading software for designing highly complex integrated circuits, by maximizing Quality of Results with respect to area, timing and power, while reducing overall design cycles and costs. Magma provides a complete RTL-to-GDSII design flow that includes design planning, prototyping, synthesis, place & route, and signal and power integrity chip design capabilities in a single executable, offering “The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon” ™. Magma’s software also includes products for advanced physical synthesis and architecture development tools for programmable logic devices (PLDs); capacitance extraction; and characterization and modeling. The company’s stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Magma is a registered trademark and The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon is a trademarks of Magma Design Automation Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-looking statements:
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including statements that Magma provides a single environment for the entire spectrum of IC implementation, that the collaboration of Magma and Faraday delivers performance and runtime improvements and that it accelerates Faraday’s leadership in structured ASICS, and about the features and benefits of Magma’s system and Faraday’s products, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, but not limited to, Magma’s and Faraday’s decisions to continue working together and their products’ abilities to produce the desired results and the companies’ abilities to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). Magma undertakes no additional obligation to update these forward-looking statements.