Signet Design Solutions Certified as MagmaTies Design Center

CUPERTINO, May 7, 2001 -- Magma Design Automation, Inc., a technology leader in silicon design implementation solutions, today announced that Signet Design Solutions, Inc., an IC design company based in Austin, Texas, has successfully completed the certification process to become a MagmaTies design center. Signet has successfully completed one design and is currently working on two other designs for a major semiconductor vendor and an IP provider.

"Our customer was having difficulty achieving timing closure on an important design. They were weighing the options of lowering the performance, delaying the project or even scrapping it," said Hung Hua, president of Signet Design Solutions. "They gave us three weeks to complete the design and although this was the first design we had implemented with Blast Fusion, our designers ramped up quickly and were able to achieve timing closure without iterating back through synthesis. We completed the design with days to spare."

"Signet employs some of the best designers of high performance, complex, multimillion-gate SOCs and we're pleased to have them as a MagmaTies partner," said Joe Hutt, vice president of technical sales at Magma Design Automation. "Their ability to deliver a design with a strict deadline and tough specification is a perfect example of what can be achieved with the best people and the best tools."

About Signet Design Solutions

Signet Design Solutions provides high quality and reliable IC design solutions to electronic system development industries. They have developed leading edge design methodologies that successfully delivered many complex designs. Signet Design Solutions is an industry leader in achieving design timing closure and SOC implementation. The company is committed to continually adopting the most advanced design techniques, automation, and simulation technologies to assure design quality, consistency and efficiency for their customers' products.

Signet Design Solutions headquarters are located at 4210 Spicewood Springs Road, Suite 202, Austin, Texas 78759, email info@signetdesign.com

About MagmaTies

Through the MagmaTies program, Magma and its partners work together to promote interoperability between Magma's systems and other EDA software and to develop proven methodologies for getting complex designs to silicon quickly and efficiently. The MagmaTies Design Center Certification program provides members access to Magma solutions, dedicated technical support and sales opportunity referrals. To become a certified member, companies must excel in logical and/or physical design and be able to provide positive customer references. Also, prospects must complete technical seminars, and demonstrate proficiency in using Magma tools.

With access to Magma software and training, certified Magma design centers can offer their customers comprehensive RTL to GDSII design capabilities. MagmaTies is open to companies that offer ASIC and semiconductor foundry services, complementary EDA software, design automation libraries, reusable designs and intellectual property (IP), and design services. For information on the MagmaTies program, please email magmaties@magma-da.com.

About Magma

Magma Design Automation provides design and implementation software that enable chip designers to shorten the time-to-market for complex integrated circuits used in the communications, computing, consumer electronics, networking and semiconductor industries. The company's products, Blast Fusion™ and Blast Chip™, represent a new methodology for the design of complex multi-million gate chips by integrating traditionally separate front-end and back-end design processes into an integrated design flow. This integrated solution significantly reduces timing closure iterations, which accelerates time-to-market for our customers. Magma's proprietary FixedTiming™ methodology and single data model architecture serve as the technical foundation for the Blast Fusion and Blast Chip products. FixedTiming enables Magma's products to optimize for timing performance throughout the flow, predict circuit speed before detailed physical design, and deliver final timing that approximates the predicted circuit speed. The single data model architecture contains and manages the logical and physical data for the chip design, allowing Magma's products to shorten the design cycle and increase the efficiency of the design process. In addition to design and implementation products, Magma's Blast Noise™ product provides noise analysis and repair, ensuring proper chip operation.

Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., the company maintains sales and support offices in Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Corporate headquarters are at 2 Results Way, Cupertino, Calif., 95014. Visit Magma Design Automation on the web at www.magma-da.com.

Blast Chip, Blast Fusion, Blast Noise, FixedTiming and Magma are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.