Novas Software Expands Lead in RTL Market Share

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2002--Novas Software, Inc., the leader in debug systems for complex chip designs, expanded its market share leadership in 2001 in the Register Transfer Level (RTL) Design category of the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, according to a report published this month by research firm Gartner/Dataquest. Dataquest credited Novas with owning 40 percent of the critical RTL Design category, up from 38 percent in 2000, and more than double the next largest supplier in this category.

In the comprehensive survey of the entire EDA industry, entitled EDA: The Automation of RTL Design, Dataquest researchers noted that, "The automation of RTL design is in full swing..." and recognized Novas as a key beneficiary of this trend. The report also forecasted the RTL category as one of the faster growing EDA segments, with compound annual growth for the next five years predicted to be 15 percent.

Dataquest places Novas in the general RTL category of its computer-aided engineering (CAE) sub-application, and defines the RTL Design category as "tools used to assist engineers in entering a design or analyzing the simulated result of that design; includes use of graphical symbols to represent RTL, VHDL or Verilog."

"Naturally, we are happy to see the growth of our company reflected in terms of increased market share. But, more importantly, we are pleased to see the significant growth prospects Dataquest attributes to the RTL and system-level design segments," said Scott Sandler, president and CEO of Novas. "As more IC designers adopt advanced methodologies for working at higher levels of abstraction, our debug solutions become even more compelling. These trends, plus the move to system-on-chip design, are precisely the challenges Debussy and Verdi address."

Novas' growth in 2001 is based on the continuing adoption of its Debussy® Knowledge-Based Debug System, the popular system that pioneered the concept of independent debug solutions. Debussy offers designers a highly automated and intuitive way to understand the structure of complex integrated circuits (ICs) in order to locate, isolate and resolve design problems. It is built on Novas' Design Knowledge Architecture, a dedicated data model optimized for design exploration and debugging.

Going forward, Novas' Sandler believes that the Company's next-generation Verdi(TM) Behavior-Based System will provide further momentum. Introduced to the market in 2002, Verdi enables designers to analyze cause and effect relationships, visualize design behavior over time, and explore alternate behaviors. Verdi applies proven synthesis technology and advanced formal methods to radically reduce the time required to comprehend how a design works or why it does not. This is an increasingly important benefit in the system-on-chip era as designs are more often comprised of unfamiliar elements, such as third-party intellectual property, re-used portions of legacy code, and new components created by distributed design teams.

About Novas

Novas is the pioneer of knowledge-based debug systems that reduce the functional verification costs for complex IC designs. Building upon the strength of its market-leading Debussy® Knowledge-Based Debug System, Novas' second-generation Verdi(TM) Behavior-Based Debug System further improves the efficiency of designers in the system-on-chip era with advanced design exploration and debug capabilities. These allow design teams to better understand and analyze complex or unfamiliar design behavior, and cuts by half or more the time it takes to locate, isolate and understand the root causes of design problems. There are more than 7,000 Novas systems in use today at customer sites worldwide. Novas is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. with offices in Europe, Japan and Asia-Pacific. For more information visit http://www.novas.com or send email to info@novas.com

Debussy is a registered trademark and Verdi is a trademark of Novas Software, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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