The following is an open letter from Lavi Lev, Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Let's Be Open
An Open Letter to EDA Company Leaders:

Dear Colleagues:

We call on all leading EDA companies to support the creation of an
open, interoperable infrastructure among databases. We know that we
operate in a world of multiple databases: legacy databases from
Cadence, Synopsys, Avant!, and other EDA vendors, along with the
proprietary databases of electronics companies.

No single company can solve the design challenges that face the
electronics industry over the next decade. As an industry, we need to
start building better bridges between these databases on the way to
delivering on the promise of an interoperable infrastructure for our
customers.

Recently, the OpenAccess Coalition received consistently positive
response to its dedication to creating an open API, delivering open
source code and providing community driven change. Achievement of this
goal means significant interoperability among IC design tools to
accelerate time-to-market for electronics companies.

This leads us to issue the challenge that every database follows
the same path of having an open API, free availability of source code
and community managed change.

We invite you to join this quest for interoperability among
databases that will reduce the cost of selecting and deploying best in
class design technologies required to meet future design challenges.

If we all open our databases, the industry will reduce unnecessary
costs to the customer and allow the EDA and electronics industries'
combined energies to focus on addressing the complexity of chip
designs. This will provide significant benefits for both the EDA and
electronics industries.

Sincerely,

Lavi Lev
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Member, OpenAccess Coalition
More information about OpenAccess is available at www.OpenEDA.org.

     Armstrong Kendall Inc.
     Matt McGinnis, 503/672-4689
     matt@akipr.com