IEEE'S DASC Approves Verisity's e Verification Language As Basis For Standardization Project

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - June 2, 2003 -Verisity Ltd. (Nasdaq:VRST), the leading supplier of essential technology and methodology for functional verification, today announced that the IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) has approved a project to use the e verification language as a basis for standardization. The IEEE Standards Association has assigned the project the number 1647. This marks a significant step for the verification industry as e is now the first verification language to be considered by the IEEE. In addition, DASC standards have an expedited path to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) submission process, facilitating further international adoption of DASC standards.

"I'm delighted to see such strong interest in developing a verification language standard and from such a broad cross-section of the industry. Such interest is one of the core necessities for a successful standard," said Paul Menchini, Chair, IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee. "We thank the Verification Language Study Group (VLSG) and the DASC for their hard work in taking these important first steps towards standardization."

"Intel believes in open standards and continues to work with EDA vendors in support of such standards," said Greg Spirakis, vice president of Design Technology at Intel. "As such, Intel fully supports Verisity's bid to have its e verification language form the basis of an IEEE verification language standard".

"Open standards encourage effective IP re-use and benefit the industry as a whole," said Jonathan Morris, System Level Design Program Manager, ARM. "We support this move to make the e language more easily accessible to the design community."

"Open industry standards are vital to the engineering community and Verisity has always supported standards," said Moshe Gavrielov, chief executive officer for Verisity. "Verisity's commitment to standardize on the e language is in direct response to overwhelming customer demand. Having a standard verification language is critical to the industry and we are proud to see such strong support for Verisity's e verification language."

The e verification language was developed by Verisity in 1992 to drive the Company's market-leading Specman Elite® testbench automation solution. From the start, e was designed to meet the unique needs of the verification community. As Specman Elite gained significant market momentum and verification engineers adopted Verisity's verification methodology, the significant benefits that the e language brings to the entire verification process became clear. [see related release titled "Verisity Announces Book on e by Renowned Industry Author" dated June 2, 2003.] In direct response to customer and EDA partner demand, Verisity began the process of making e an industry standard in 2000 by making the e verification language available to third parties through its LicenseE™ program. Today's announcement marks a significant and vital step in that process for standardization.

The Road to Standardization
Verisity has always been committed to standardizing the e language and began working towards standardizing the language over two years ago. Verisity believed that in order to make a successful standard, it must meet all of the following criteria:

• De facto usage-the format must be in use by a significant part of the market, including strategic customers that influence the marketplace. The LicenseE Steering Committee consists of major industry players committed to driving the e language towards standardization. Customers participating on the LicenseE Steering Committee include: ARM, Cisco Systems, Infineon, LSI Logic, PMC Sierra and STMicroelectronics.
• Third-party pull-there must also be a large pull from third parties to interoperate with the e verification language. Verisity created the LicenseE™ program in 2000 to license the e language to third-parties in order to facilitate interoperability between third-party verification solutions. Partners licensing the e language for tool development include: @HDL, Averant, Axis Systems, NoBug Consulting, Novas Software, Prover Technologies, STARC, SynaptiCAD and TNI-Valiosys.
• Interested standards bodies-there must be interest in developing the format into a formal standard from standards organizations. Today's news that IEEE's DASC has approved a project to use the e verification language as a basis for standardization is the result of significant interest from the industry and marketplace.

• Declarative constraints for test generation,
• Complete protocol/assertion language,
• Coverage specifications,
• Support for Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) for combining distinct specification aspects,
• The capability to use both declarative and procedural code, including the capability to define new declarative constructs,
• Constructs for describing timing and synchronization, interfacing to HDLs, low-level file and string operations.

For more information contact:
Jennifer Bilsey
Verisity Design, Inc.
(650) 934-6823
jen@verisity.com