Mentor Graphics unveils new quick design system

Electronic News, Nov 14, 1994

Wilsonville, Ore. - Mentor Gragphics Corp. last week introduced its new line of WorkXpert family of products, which it claimed has given early users a reported reduction in design cycle times of up to 30 percent through easier capture, control and tracking of design flow.

Company executives told Electronic News that the new product line was developed in cooperation with Electric Corp. and Martin Marietta, which it said have both been using, prototype systems for the past year.

The Mentor Graphics statement quoted Makoto Morishita, Mitsubishi's CAD engneering manager as saying: "As a technology partner with Mentor Graphics during the development of the WorkXpert products, we have had an opportunity to experience results of up to 30 percent reduction in design cycle time by capturing and deploying design process expertise and tracking the results across entire design projects. We, plan to include design flows utlizing the WorkXpert products our design kits beginning in the first half of 1995."

Mr. Morishita added: "As an ASIC vendor. our coal is to completely eliminate design process errors to achieve first-pass pass design success with our customers."

The statement also included a testimonial from TRW's Military, Electronics & Avionics division, which has been evaluating the system for the last two months, according to Phil Kilcoin. Mentor Graphics's product marketing manager.

Mentor Graphics said the family consists of FlowXpert and XpertBuilder, respectively priced at $5,000 and $15,000 each for floating licenses, which will be available in February, and ProjectXpert, priced at $5,000 each for floating licenses, which will be available in May. Mr. Kilcoin said "floating license" means the system will work on any work-station in a network and not just an individual workstation.

FlowXpert offers a graphical view of design flows, tracking of tasks and data, automation or design steps and a history of actions taken to complete the design, Mentor Graphics said. XpertBuilder is a graphical drag and drop builder tool for capturing and modifying design flows and associated behavior, the company said. ProjectXpert permits the setup and administration of design projects, it said.

Mentor Graphics said EDA designs are most often produced by a group of people working as a team. WorkXpert supports the team concept by allowing members to work on different aspects simultaneously and immediately seeing who is executing a given step in the overall process.

It has a "replayable history" that captures the actions performed and allows a project manager to view any or all portions and generate reports as needed.

"To remain competitive, companies must be able to continually improve design methodologies and reuse successfull design processes. The WorkXpert products allow users to visually capture and define the steps of a design process and then easily customized reuse them for other products," Mr. Kilcoin said.