SAN JOSE, Calif., May 21, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Magma(r) Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq:LAVA), a provider of semiconductor design software, today announced significant new enhancements to Quartz(tm) DRC and Quartz LVS that result from the company's accelerated product development efforts during its recently completed 2007 fiscal year. Magma will demonstrate the new Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS capabilities in booth 4578 at the Design Automation Conference which is held June 3-8 in San Diego.
Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS, introduced in 2005 as the industry's first linearly scalable physical verification tools, enable faster time to market for manufacturing sign-off. These products are now deployed in production worldwide at top semiconductor manufacturers, including recognized leaders in microprocessors, graphics, networking and wireless chip design, and have been certified by the major foundries for sign-off at 90, 65, 45 nanometers (nm) and below.
"For the past 12 months we focused on developing significant improvements to core physical verification architecture," said John Lee, general manager of Magma's Physical Verification Business Unit. "With the new capabilities we can build on the market success of Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS by enabling our customers to significantly accelerate time to market -- reducing tapeout cycles by weeks -- while decreasing design costs through automation and improved chip performance and yield."
Among the new capabilities are:
* Automatic Native Incremental Checking: This technology eliminates
costly database export / import common in legacy flows. With
this, Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS are able to automatically detect
when and where a designer makes changes, and incrementally check
only those changed portions. In production testing at a major
customer site, this capability provided a 7x improvement in
turnaround time by running sign-off physical verification.
* Direct Streaming: This technology extends Magma's pipelined
architecture to leverage the strength of multi-core processors
available today. This technology enables an order of magnitude
increase in scalability, and significantly reduces hardware
costs, compared to existing architectures.
* DFM Hotspot Analysis: This technology extends the Quartz DRC
foundry-certified model-based lithography process (LPC) checking
to include sign-off critical area analysis (CAA) and chemical-
mechanical polishing (CMP) simulation. These new capabilities are
currently under foundry test to be certified for 65 and 45 nm.
* Electrical Design for Manufacturability (DFM) Analysis: This
technology provides a complete solution for designers to analyze
and characterize the timing and power impact due to sources of
manufacturing variability, such as lithography and CMP. With
this, designers can reduce the guard-banding in traditional
design flows, allowing significant gains in timing and power
performance. This capability is delivered in conjunction with
Magma's Talus(tm) DFM, Quartz DFM and SiliconSmart(r) products.
* Automated DFM Fixing: This technology provides significant
productivity and yield enhancement capabilities by automating the
removal of DFM problems in a timing- and power-aware manner.
Availability
The automatic native incremental capabilities are available now. The automated DFM fixing, electrical DFM and physical DFM capabilities are in limited release.
About Magma
Magma's software for integrated circuit (IC) design is recognized as embodying the best in semiconductor technology, enabling the world's top chip companies to "Design Ahead of the Curve."TM Magma provides EDA software for IC implementation, analysis, physical verification and characterization. Magma products are used by the world's leading engineers to create complex, high-performance ICs for consumer electronics, mobile communications, computing and networking applications, while at the same time reducing design time and costs. Magma is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with offices around the world. Magma's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.
SiliconSmart and Magma are registered trademarks, and "Design Ahead of the Curve," Quartz and Talus are trademarks of Magma Design Automation Inc. 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 that Magma products will reduce turnaround time, increase scalability and improve power and performance and other statements about the features and benefits of Magma's products, 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 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 public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). Magma undertakes no additional obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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