Fujitsu Uses Blast Fusion to Achieve One-Pass Silicon Success On ASIC & SoC Designs

Business Wire, May 14, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2002

Magma's Integrated Implementation System With Built-in Signal

Integrity Technology Delivers a Superior Design Closure Flow

Magma(R) Design Automation, Inc. (Nasdaq:LAVA), a provider of chip design solutions, today announced that Fujitsu Limited of Japan has achieved one-pass silicon success using Blast Fusion(TM) and Blast Noise(TM) on a number of ASICs and SoCs (systems on chip), including a 4-million-gate, 0.18-micron design. The designs have been implemented in Fujitsu's CS71 and CS81 processes and are targeted for Japan's high-volume consumer products.

Last year, Fujitsu deployed ASIC and SoC flows based on Magma's Blast Fusion physical design system and the Blast Noise signal integrity technology. Since then Fujitsu has taped out several next-generation designs using these flows. Fujitsu selected Blast Fusion and Blast Noise for ASIC and SOC designs knowing the size and complexity of their designs would make meeting timing and managing signal integrity a challenge.

Blast Fusion's powerful clock tree synthesis allowed Fujitsu to implement clock trees with useful skew on critical paths. By delaying the clock arrival to the receiving register and speeding up the clock arrival to the launching register, Blast Fusion made more time available on critical paths and ensured timing closure.

Integrating Blast Fusion's implementation and Blast Noise's signal integrity avoidance and repair capabilities, Fujitsu was able to further streamline the place-and-route process. Fujitsu had very stringent noise and delay specifications and ensuring that all crosstalk noise and crosstalk delay problems were eliminated was very critical. Blast Noise's signal integrity avoidance and repair capabilities not only eliminated all the noise and delay violations, but did so in a single pass. Ultimately, the ability to address DRC/LVS and antenna rule checking, crosstalk noise and crosstalk delay throughout the implementation flow without layout-to-synthesis iterations reduced Fujitsu's design closure cycle and enabled them to deliver the working samples on time.

"Under current economic conditions, time to market, productivity and predictability are the key attributes for success and survival," said Mr. Yoshinori Hatano, a general manager of the CAD system division at Fujitsu Limited. "Magma's innovative technology and single, unified data model provides predictable design closure. This comprehensive design methodology combines logical and physical design with signal integrity avoidance and repair capabilities, making it suitable for high-volume and high-value designs. With Magma's technology, Fujitsu is able to meet internal and end-customer requirements for robust and reliable silicon that works the first time. Our joint teams have worked closely to implement this methodology and to build predictability into the ASIC and SoC design process. With the completion of these designs, our early assessment of Magma's solutions has proved to be correct."

"The Fujitsu-Magma team is very proud of these results. We are pleased to be able to bring measurable value to our strategic customer and our customer's customer," said Seiji Miwa, president of Magma Japan. "We will continue to work with Fujitsu to deliver more successful designs."

About Magma Design Automation

Magma software products enable chip designers to reduce the time required to design and produce complex integrated circuits in the communications, computing, consumer electronics, networking and semiconductor industries. Magma provides a single executable for RTL-to-GDSII chip design. The company's products, Blast Fusion(TM), Blast Chip(TM), Blast Plan(TM), Blast Noise(TM) and Blast Prototype(TM) utilize Magma's proprietary FixedTiming(R) methodology and single data model architecture to reduce the timing-closure iterations often required between the logic and physical processes in conventional IC design flows. Magma's Diamond SI(TM) also leverages the single data model architecture to provide an integrated, standalone platform for post-layout, sign-off-quality signal integrity verification.

Magma maintains headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as well as sales and support facilities in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; Durham, N.C.; Laurys Station, Pa.; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Newcastle, Wash.; and in Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. The company's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Note to Editors: Magma and FixedTiming are registered trademarks and Blast Chip, Blast Fusion, Blast Noise, Blast Plan, Blast Prototype and Diamond SI are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. 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 about the features and benefits of Magma's products and that Magma will continue to work with Fujitsu to deliver more successful designs, 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, whether Magma will continue to work with Fujitsu to deliver more successful designs, the ability of Magma's products to produce the desired results and Magma's ability to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2001 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on February 14, 2002, and from time to time in Magma's SEC reports. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Magma disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.