Verisity Addresses Verification Predictability and Resource Utilization with Industry's First Verification Management Solution

vManager Directs Distributed Verification Activities from Executable Plans to Total Coverage and Closure

To facilitate optimal deployment of verification environments and compute resources, vManager filters and analyzes the enormous amounts of verification data created every hour, of every day. It then annotates and correlates the results against verification runs, and displays various views of the project's progress towards verification closure.

"As complexity of distributed verification activities and associated verification data increases beyond the capacity of the human brain, verification management becomes essential," said Steve Glaser, vice president of Corporate Marketing and Business Development for Verisity. "In order to verify today's complex designs, project teams run thousands of simulation sessions to verify millions of functional combinations. This can create variances in schedules of greater than three months that they would like to reduce to less than three weeks, and ideally less than three days. Verisity has responded with an automated approach that guides and measures the progress of complex verification from inception to verification closure."

Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV)

vManager is based on a metric-driven philosophy that includes total coverage measurement and analysis. Verisity calls this process Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV). CDV provides the best means for identifying verification work that needs to be completed, and assists in focusing time and compute resources on simulations that are most likely to improve the total coverage metric, thus saving time and money. Total coverage is the combination of all sources of coverage information into a single dataset including functional coverage, source code coverage such as HDL and assertion coverage. Total coverage provides the analysis engines in vManager with a single view of the status of the verification project.

"We have fully embraced Coverage-Driven Verification as the means for planning and measuring progress towards tape-out," said Joe Rash, director of Engineering, AMCC. "Verisity's plans for the vManager product hits the mark by delivering automated coverage analysis that is tightly coupled with an executable verification plan. It accelerates the identification of coverage gaps, allowing us to drive verification closure more rapidly."

vManager is a critical element of Verisity's Verification Process Automation (VPA) strategy which simplifies the complex process of verification. Verisity is focused on a total VPA solution that addresses customer needs at both the engineering and project levels. At the engineering level, Verisity offers world-class technology to improve the speed and quality of both block and SoC/system-level verification. Today, at the project level, Verisity offers several productized methodologies to enable customers to proliferate best practices throughout project teams. With vManager, Verisity now offers a project-level solution that increases predictability of verification closure and optimizes utilization of resources.

Value for all Team Members

vManager delivers value for all members of the verification team, including the project manager, verification leaders and verification engineers. For the project manager, vManager provides predictability and optimization of resources by capturing an executable specification and providing a clear view of verification status through total coverage measurement. For verification leaders, vManager enables them to communicate effectively with management on progress, as well as identify issues and assign engineers to address the most important tasks. Finally, vManager enables verification engineers to make informed decisions on how to best approach each task, simulation failure or coverage improvement.

A Complete Verification Management Solution

Verisity's vManager provides features for organizing and deploying simulation suites, gathering volumes of data, analyzing results and making rapid decisions and adjustments to reach verification closure. Specifically, vManager features:

--	An executable verification plan. vManager drives the verification process from the verification plan by capturing the objectives from the specification and reporting the progress.
--	Management and deployment of thousands of simulations. vManager takes these incredibly complex tasks that once required intensive human interaction and automates them. Engineers can now spend less effort tracking and reporting on coverage status and increase the amount of simulations they can run daily.
--	Failure analysis. vManager reduces the overall effort and shortens simulation failure debug time. It separates design failures from simulation failures, sorting and grouping these failures for easy selection and action. It identifies the least costly simulation to exhibit the failure and the optimal case for repeated debugging.
--	Total coverage analysis. vManager provides analysis features that help users improve their simulation runs to achieve total coverage. This is enabled by the Specman Elite(R) Coverage and Assertion Interface (CAI) that allows users to import external coverage metrics. By bringing all of this data together, vManager makes it possible for teams to easily view coverage metrics from a number of vantage points, pinpoint the holes and re-direct verification to cover those holes.
--	Defined milestones and measurement of actual verification progress. With vManager, coverage goals for the module, and the system level, can be specified and achieved throughout the life of the project.

Pricing and Availability

vManager will be available on the AIX, Linux Operating System, Solaris and HP workstations running HP-UX in the first quarter of 2004. The price is $45,000 U.S. for a time-based license and maintenance.

About Verisity

Verisity, Ltd. (Nasdaq:VRST) is the leading supplier of process automation solutions for the functional verification market. The company addresses customers' critical business issues with its market-leading software and intellectual property (IP) that effectively and efficiently verify the design of electronic systems and complex integrated circuits for the communications, computing, and consumer electronics global markets. Verisity's Specman Elite(R) verification process automation solution automates manual processes and detects critical flaws in hardware designs enabling delivery of the highest quality products and accelerating time to market. The company's strong market presence is driven by its proven technology, methodology, and solid strategic partnerships and programs. Verisity's customer list includes leading companies in all strategic technology sectors. Verisity is a global organization with offices throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Verisity's principal executive offices are located in Mountain View, Calif., with its principal research and development offices located in Rosh Ha'ain, Israel. For more information, visit www.verisity.com.

Verisity, the Verisity logo, vManager and Specman Elite are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Verisity Design, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Verisity Design, Inc.
             Jennifer Bilsey, 650-934-6823
             jen@verisity.com