Synopsys Announces Growing Industry Support for OpenVera Assertions

Design Verification and Service Companies Address Growing Demand for Assertion-Based Methodology by Offering Verification Intellectual Property

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., December 9, 2002 - Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS), the technology leader for complex integrated circuit (IC) design, today announced the availability of seven new third party verification intellectual property (IP) offerings based on OpenVera™ Assertions (OVA). Designed for checking compliance with widely adopted and emerging protocols, OVA verification IP are reusable modules that accelerate the development of a complete verification environment, improving overall efficiency and productivity for design and verification engineers. With the release of these OVA verification IP offerings, third party IP providers Cold Spring Engineering, nSys and Silicon Interfaces join the growing list of design verification and service providers who support OVA for customers seeking an assertion-based methodology to overcome the verification bottleneck.

"Our customers are demanding assertion-based verification IP for up and coming standards such as PCI Express, and we are responding by developing models based on OVA," said Anil Tickoo, director of sales and marketing at nSys. "With its high-level of abstraction, OVA allowed us to quickly create IP that let our customers verify complex functionality using both dynamic and formal verification methods. The end result is that engineers who use our OVA-based IP find corner-case and hard-to-find bugs earlier in the design schedule."

OpenVera Assertions Verification IP Available
OpenVera Assertions is a high-level verification language that enables an assertion-based methodology for improving verification productivity, and is supported by a library of reusable IP. Design and verification engineers use OVA's powerful declarative constructs to easily create and maintain concise verification code. With a growing list of tool support, OVA IP can easily be utilized across a variety of verification tools - simulation, testbench, debug, and formal analysis. Furthermore, OVA IP allow verification engineers to focus on verifying intended behavior of their designs rather than spending an inordinate amount of time setting up verification environments. New OVA verification IP are available from the following companies:

Company	OpenVera Assertions Verification IP Offerings
Cold Spring Engineering	Utopia 2.0, SPI 4.2
nSys	PCI Express, PCMCIA, UART, Parallel 1284
Silicon Interfaces	Bluetooth, USB 2.0

"Increased interest in OVA and its growing appeal to vendors and users is driving this latest round of verification IP from these providers," said James Watts, OpenVera program manager at Synopsys, Inc. "We continue to welcome design and verification solution providers to develop OVA verification IP through our successful OpenVera Catalyst Program. When they join the program, providers become part of a broad network of verification companies with expert tool and methodology knowledge in leading verification solutions."

About OpenVera and OpenVera Assertions
OpenVera is an open source hardware verification language developed to meet the unique requirements of functional verification. OpenVera Assertions (OVA) is a high-level language that contains powerful declarative constructs for accurately capturing design specification and is useful in both dynamic and formal verification environments. With these languages, design and verification engineers describe the target application environment, including complex protocols and data objects, at a high level of abstraction, which significantly improves productivity, readability and reusability. For more information on OpenVera and OVA, visit www.open-vera.com.

About Synopsys
Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS), headquartered in Mountain View, California, creates leading EDA tools for the global electronics market. The company delivers advanced design technologies and solutions to developers of complex integrated circuits, electronic systems and systems on a chip. Synopsys also provides consulting and support services to simplify the overall IC design process and accelerate time to market for its customers. Visit Synopsys at http://www.synopsys.com.

Synopsys is a registered trademark of Synopsys, Inc. OpenVera is a trademark of Synopsys. All other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.