Mentor Graphics and Atmel Announce OEM Agreement to Provide Design Flow for Programmable SoCs

SAN JOSE, Calif. & WILSONVILLE, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2002--Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq:ATML - news) and Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq:MENT - news) announced today an agreement to provide a comprehensive design flow for Atmel's award winning programmable system-on-chip (SoC) solutions, enabling embedded system designers to significantly increase productivity and accelerate time-to-market. Under the agreement, Atmel will license three premier tools from Mentor Graphics, including customized versions of the Seamless® co-verification environment, the ModelSim® HDL simulator and LeonardoSpectrum(TM) synthesis tools.

These tools are integrated along with Atmel's FPGA place & route tools and AVR Studio® into Atmel's System Designer(TM) programmable SoC design environment for the design and verification of Atmel's FPSLIC(TM) (Field Programmable System Level IC) programmable SoCs. Atmel's AVR Studio is a complete microcontroller code development environment that includes a compiler, debugger and instruction set simulator (ISS). The result is a unified environment for the co-development and co-verification of both the integrated AVR® processor code and the HDL hardware design FPGA portions of programmable SoCs.

The System Designer design and co-verification environment that results from the integration of the Mentor and Atmel tools allows the FPGA's HDL design to be verified concurrently with the debugging of the MCU code. The designer has full visibility into the processor's program counter, memory, registers, and peripherals and into the performance of the FPGA, at every stage during the HDL simulation.

"Mentor Graphics is the only EDA company that has addressed and solved the issue of designing and verifying programmable SoC devices. No other EDA vendor has as comprehensive and integrated a solution," said Joel Rosenberg, director of PSLI products for Atmel. "Our System Designer tool suite provides the only comprehensive design solution for programmable SoCs. We could not have created our design flow without Mentor Graphics."

"Our sustained partnership with Atmel demonstrates Mentor Graphics commitment to providing comprehensive system-level solutions for all FPGA-based products and specifically for programmable SoCs," said Anne Sanquini, vice president and general manager of the HDL Design division, Mentor Graphics. "Atmel continues to push the limits of programmable system-level integration and Mentor's tools continue to support its latest innovations, while at the same time minimizing design risk and reducing design cycles."

Seamless Addresses Co-Verification Needs

Seamless allows users to validate hardware/software interfaces in a virtual and unified environment. Co-verification provides a high-visibility design and debug environment enabling the early detection and correction of potential software code and/or hardware logic errors. Tailored to the FPSLIC architecture, Seamless is designed to address the co-verification needs of Atmel's customers. The Seamless tool uses pre-existing knowledge of the embedded processor and memory system to eliminate the configuration stage traditionally associated with co-verification tools, making co-verification a push-button process in the System Designer tool suite.

ModelSim Enables Multi-Language Simulation

The Mentor Graphics ModelSim HDL simulator tool is aimed at today's multi-million gate ASIC and FPGA designs. The need to detect errors in the development cycle, before synthesis and place and route, becomes increasingly important in improving engineering productivity. ModelSim provides FPSLIC designers access to a complete VHDL or Verilog-based design flow, including RTL and gate-level HDL simulation and synthesis.

LeonardoSpectrum Offers Superior Synthesis Capabilities

The Mentor Graphics LeonardoSpectrum synthesis tool allows Atmel users to create FPGA designs in VHDL or Verilog using one synthesis environment. LeonardoSpectrum eases the creation and management of FPSLIC designs used in markets such as industrial control, communications, broadband, wireless and multimedia. Combining push-button ease-of-use features and sophisticated design strategies, LeonardoSpectrum allows Atmel designers to carefully control and optimize FPGA designs to meet their exact design requirements.

HDL Planner

In addition to the Mentor Graphics and AVR Studio development tools, Atmel's System Designer has an HDL Planner module that allows firmware developers who are not familiar with hardware description languages to rapidly create syntactically correct Verilog or VHDL designs for the embedded FPGA logic inside FPSLIC. Using a top down design flow, the designer creates hardware components using any of more than 50 point-and-click macro generators. In addition, HDL Planner will automatically generate architecturally optimized layout and post layout Verilog or VHDL models for the FPGA portion of the design.

Pricing and Availability

Available today, Atmel's ATSTK94 FPSLIC Starter Kit contains a four-month software license and an FPSLIC prototyping hardware kit for $495. System Designer version 2.0 is available now for $995 for an annual subscription, or $2,495 for a perpetual license.

About Atmel

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS, BiCMOS, SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies.

About Mentor Graphics Corporation

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq:MENT - news) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $600 million and employs approximately 3,100 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Ore. 97070-7777; Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com.

Note to Editors: Atmel, AVR and AVR Studio are registered trademarks, and System Designer and FPSLIC trademarks of Atmel Corporation. Mentor Graphics, ModelSim, and Seamless are registered trademarks, and LeonardoSpectrum is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation.

     Atmel
     Joel Rosenberg, 408/436-4290 (Programmable SLI Director)
     jrosenberg@atmel.com
     Clive Over, 408/451-2855 (Director of PR)
     cliveover@atmel.com
     Veronique Sablereau, 33 1 30 60 70 68 (Europe)
     (Corporate Communications Manager)
     veronique.sablereau@atmel.com
       or
     Mentor Graphics Corporation
     Keri Wilson, 503/685-1359
     keriwilson@mentor.com
       or
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     Mark Mohammadpour, 503/552-3734
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