Sonics Joins Verisity's Pure IP Program

Sonics Delivers OCP Compliance Solution for SOC Designers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 2002--Verisity, Ltd. (Nasdaq:VRST - news), the leading provider of functional verification automation, and Sonics, Inc. today announced that Sonics has joined Verisity's Pure IP(TM) program to provide their customers a compliance solution based on the industry standard Open Core Protocol(TM) (OCP) managed by the OCP-IP consortium. As a user of Verisity's Specman Elite(TM) product and member of the Pure IP program, Sonics can develop and deliver robust OCP compliance toolkits, written in the defacto standard e verification language, to enable customers to ensure their intellectual property (IP) cores are compliant to the OCP protocol, and prepared for plug-and-play SOC integration using Sonics' smart interconnect IP, the SiliconBackplane(TM) MicroNetwork and Sonics' memory scheduler MemMax(TM).

"Sonics is committed to supporting bus-independent IP core interfaces that enable reuse without rework," said Dave Lautzenheiser, vice president of marketing at Sonics, Inc. "Our smart SOC interconnect IP automatically creates appropriate integration interfaces for any IP core interfaced with the specification from OCP-IP. Mutual success with our customers therefore depends on a properly verified OCP implementation. This relationship allows us to leverage Verisity's leading verification technology and methodologies to deliver a solution that improves our customers' OCP compliance verification, ensuring they maximize the benefits of smart interconnect."

The OCP-IP organization delivers the first openly licensed, core-centric protocol that comprehensively fulfills system-level integration requirements for semiconductor IP. The OCP's configurable interface includes all of the signals required to describe IP core communication including data flow, control, and verification and test signals. Using this specification to format an IP core's on-chip signals ensures independence from limitations imposed by specific bus protocols, yet enables a simple bridging of a core's full capability to suit a particular bus protocol, or as in Sonics case, for the interconnect to automatically adapt to the core's signals.

"Sonics directly addresses the issue of 'plug-and-play' SOC design with their innovative technologies and we are pleased to enable them to ensure OCP compliance, facilitating reuse and improved time-to-market," said Dave Tokic, director of strategic marketing at Verisity. "Our relationship with Sonics provides customers with a powerful verification capability and represents a key endorsement of our technology and the e verification language."

Through Pure IP, Sonics can offer compliance toolkits written in the e verification language to their customers to ensure their IP cores are compliant to the OCP standard and ready to be immediately integrated into an SOC using their smart interconnect IP. The toolkit will facilitate OCP protocol checking, signal and data traffic generation, and functional coverage analysis leveraging Sonics' existing OCP verification environments that also package all views of a core as a virtual component.

The Pure IP Program

Verisity's Pure IP program eases the development, delivery and integration of IP. The program enables IP developers to thoroughly verify their IP prior to delivery, then package and transfer their knowledge of the IP and integration rules in an executable form through verification toolkits. Customers using the toolkits can automatically check for correctness of the integration and measure the interface coverage between the IP and the system.

About Verisity

Verisity is the leading provider of proprietary technologies and software products used to efficiently verify designs of electronic systems and complex integrated circuits that are essential to high growth segments of the electronics industry. The Company's products automate the process of detecting flaws in these designs, enabling customers to deliver higher quality products, accelerate time-to-market and reduce overall product development costs.

Verisity Design, Inc.'s principal executive offices are located in Mountain View, Calif. The Company's principal research and development offices are located in Rosh Ha'ain, Israel. For more information, see Verisity's web site at www.verisity.com.

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc., the premier developer of MicroNetworks for "plug and play" integration of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) cores into system-on-chip (SOC) designs, is a privately held company in Mountain View, Calif. A Sonics MicroNetwork manages all communications between SOC subsystems, guarantees end-to-end performance, and ensures real-time quality of service. MicroNetwork technology enables flexible, platform-based SOC design through a robust development environment that uses an open standard core interface, the Open Core Protocol (OCP). Major semiconductor and systems companies have adopted Sonics' technology for SOC applications in the communications, networking and multimedia markets. For more information, see http://www.sonicsinc.com.

Verisity is a registered trademark of Verisity Design, Inc. Pure IP and Specman Elite are trademarks of Verisity Design, Inc. Sonics and SIliconBackplane are registered trademarks of Sonics Inc., OCP is a trademark of OCP-IP. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

     Verisity Design, Inc.
     Jennifer Bilsey, 650/934-6823
     jen@verisity.com
         or
     Sonics, Inc.
     Ed Smith, 650/938-2500 ext. 126
     edsmith@sonicsinc.com