Atrenta Announces Nova-ExploreRTL/VeriLint Replacement Program

Upgrade to SpyGlass Offers Significant New Capabilities and Ensures Future Support

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2002--Atrenta Inc., the Predictive Analysis company, today announced an aggressive trade-in program that allows designers with Nova-ExploreRTL(TM), Nova-VeriLint(TM) and Nova-VHDLint(TM) (VeriLint) licenses to upgrade to Atrenta's SpyGlass(TM) software. Under this limited-time offer that expires June 30, 2002, one SpyGlass license is free for every two VeriLint licenses that are traded in for two SpyGlass licenses.

"With the pending acquisition of Avant!, future support for Nova-ExploreRTL and the Verilint product family is a serious question and a big concern for the users of these products," stated Ghulam Nurie, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Atrenta. "In addition to ensuring future support and enhancements, Atrenta's trade-in program offers a great opportunity for Avant! customers to move up to SpyGlass, a predictive analysis product with many advanced capabilities not found in Avant!'s products. In addition to basic linting capability, SpyGlass offers checks for very complex design problems such as clock domain crossings, timing issues, area estimation and one-hot checks."

About SpyGlass

Atrenta's SpyGlass employs a unique predictive analysis technique that looks at the structure of the RTL design and finds down-stream problems that are not detectable by other methods including other rule checkers, simulators and formal verifiers. Atrenta has developed a unique technology that uses fast synthesis to create a gate-level representation so true structural analysis can be performed during the RTL design phase. In addition, this innovative "look-ahead" capability incorporates a simulator and a testability engine to perform dynamic analysis and true testability analysis while the design is still at RT level. This enables SpyGlass to detect at the RT level very complex design problems such as clock synchronization, tri-state bus decoders, combinational loops, DFT issues, logic cone depth, and race conditions in sequential circuits. A new graphical user interface with a schematic browser for the synthesized view pinpoints design violations on the original RTL for quick problem isolation and debugging.

SpyGlass provides a powerful environment where reuse requirements and best practices can be captured, consolidated and used to analyze a design. A broad collection of configurable policies is available with SpyGlass in both VHDL and Verilog. These policies include over 2500 rules and guidelines covering coding style, design practices, DFT, OpenMORE and other advanced checks. In addition, special policies are available to optimize performance for Synopsys' VCS simulator and to provide compliance with LogicVision Memory BIST and Logic BIST requirements.

Custom policies are easily developed in either PERL or C. Direct access to internal SpyGlass data structures is provided through the same SpyGlass API that is used by Atrenta's internal developers and partners. This enables access both to RT-level and post-synthesis gate structures to facilitate the development of highly sophisticated rules that can be used in a high performance interactive environment. SpyGlass also provides sample policies that provide users a way to jump-start their customization efforts.

About Atrenta

Atrenta offers a new approach in accelerating the design of complex ASICs, FPGAs, and SoCs through predictive analysis. Its SpyGlass software is the first tool that performs detailed structural analysis on register-transfer-level Verilog and VHDL code in order to check for complex problems, which include coding styles, RTL-handoff, design re-use, clock/reset requirements, and much more. Atrenta has over 45 customers, such as Agere, Agilent, Apple, ARM, Canon, Compaq, Fujitsu, Hitachi, LSI Logic, Motorola, National Semiconductor, NCR, Nortel, Olympus and Panasonic who are using SpyGlass to achieve shorter overall design cycles, increased design productivity and lower costs. Atrenta is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with European headquarters in Swindon, England, a research and development center in India, and a sales and support distributor in Japan. For further information, visit the Atrenta website at http://www.atrenta.com or call 1-866 ATRENTA.

Atrenta, the Atrenta logo and SpyGlass are trademarks of Atrenta Inc. Avant!, Nova-ExploreRTL, Nova-VeriLint and Nova-VHDLint are trademarks of Avant! Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

     Atrenta
     Mona Singh, 408/467-4248
     mona@atrenta.com
       or
     Atrenta PR Counsel:
     Paula Jones, 650/967-3711 (Editorial)
     paula@newiic.com