Cadence Adopts Sun Solaris as Primary Design Environment; OS Upgrade Provides Significant Performance Enhancement; JumpStart System Makes Transition Simple and Fast

Business Wire, June 10, 1996

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 1996--Sun Microsystems Computer Company and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. today revealed that Cadence is now installing Sun's latest, most powerful operating system, Sun (TM) Solaris 2.5 (TM) as the standard environment for the many Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software development workstations the company uses to design its product.

Cadence is moving to the Solaris 2.5 system because of the many performance advantages it offers.

The Solaris operating environment doubles workstation NFS (TM) performance, and improves windowing system performance by 45 percent over the previous development environment used at Cadence, the SunOS (TM) operating system. Using the Solaris JumpStart (TM) system, the migration engineer is able to upgrade up to 50 workstations a day over the network. After the transition, it takes most developers less than two hours to become operational.

This project, which will upgrade approximately 1,000 Sun workstations, will be carried out in phases by a single migration engineer. In addition, the companies announced that Cadence will transition 400 workstations located in Cadence field offices and training centers.

Sun is working closely with Cadence on this major migration project, providing transition-oriented user training and logistical support. Engineers at Sun's Developer Support Center created transition scripts used by Sun's JumpStart network install system. The system audits workstation resources, installs and configures upgrades over the network, and transitions third-party software and network protocols as well as user-specific directories and files to the new operating environment.

Once transitioned, Cadence developers gain access to Sun's latest technology such as SunSoft (TM) WorkShop (TM) development tools suite for Solaris. As Cadence expands on its newly installed base of 70 UltraSPARC workstations, overall performance will be enhanced even further.

"We are intensely busy and have to implement this project with little to no downtime," commented Dick Albright, Cadence vice president of operations. "So we are doing the changeover in stages. As a team of engineers finishes a development release, we quickly upgrade the whole team before they begin their next project. Now that we've migrated almost 700 workstations, I can say that I've never seen a major operating system upgrade go more smoothly."

"This is a key migration project for Sun. Cadence is not only an important customer and partner but they are a technology leader as well," said Mark Tolliver, Sun vice president of market development. "This project -- the training, the JumpStart network install scripts and the logistical template -- has already become a model for other Solaris migration projects both for Cadence customers and for the wider universe of Sun customers."

Following the transition, Cadence will use Sun workstations running Solaris 2.5 for future releases. Solaris 2.5 developed applications will also be ported to the HP-UX, IBM-AIX and SunOS operating systems. Cadence developers are familiar with Solaris since they have been providing Solaris versions of the company's 600 applications for the last two years.

Solaris allows a mixed SunOS/Solaris environment, so after the transition, Cadence will maintain approximately 200 workstations on SunOS for an indefinite period of time for on-going porting and support needs.

For more information on Solaris migration, including whitepapers and how to order free migration kits with the JumpStart system, see http://www.sun.com/smcc/solaris-migration/. The Cadence Web page which lists support of all their applications on Solaris is http: www.cadence.com/platform.html.>Cadence Design Systems, Inc. provides comprehensive services and technology for the product development requirements of the world's leading electronics companies. Cadence is the largest supplier of software tools and professional services used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronic-based products.

With more than 3,000 employees and annual sales in excess of a half-billion dollars, Cadence has sales offices and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN.

Sun Microsystems Computer Company is a world leader in the design, manufacture and sale of network computing systems and is a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Recognized for quality and innovation, the company's SPARC workstations and multiprocessing servers each hold the No. 1 UNIX marketshare position. These systems are used primarily by businesses, educational institutions and governments worldwide for technical, commercial, industrial, and software development applications. -0-

Note to Editors: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, SunSoft Workshop, NFS, JumpStart and Sun OS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.