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Mentor Graphics Announces Platform Express Product Support for the new SPIRIT 1.0 Specification
Platform Express Users Can Now Create SoC Designs Using
SPIRIT 1.0 Compatible IP
GRENOBLE, France—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 8, 2004—
Mentor Graphics(R) (Nasdaq:MENT) today announced that the Platform
Express(TM) product, the company's preeminent XML-based rapid
system-on-chip (SoC) design creation tool, supports the SPIRIT 1.0
specification for intellectual property (IP) design re-use. Released
today, SPIRIT 1.0 defines a standard XML data set to ease IP
integration issues during the SoC design process.
"The success of SPIRIT depends on EDA vendors supporting the
standard with their tools. Mentor is a technology contributor and
active participant in creating the SPIRIT standard, so it's great to
see this work being successfully deployed in Platform Express," said
Ralph von Vignau, Chairman of SPIRIT and Director Technology &
Standards of Philips Semiconductors, Chief Technology Office - Re-use
Technology Group
As SoC designs grow larger and more sophisticated, the task of
integrating complex IP blocks into a system becomes increasingly labor
intensive and time consuming. The SPIRIT 1.0 standard enables IP
providers to create an IP databook in XML, documenting features, data
files and configurability options for IP. Platform Express uses the
SPIRIT 1.0 XML data to automate the painstaking IP integration
process, leaving designers with more time to evaluate the performance
of the IP block, its behavior and performance in the system context,
explore design alternatives, and focus engineering resources on design
features that differentiate the end product.
"Mentor Graphics pioneered key XML-based design and IP re-use
concepts with Platform Express, enabling designers to automatically
configure IP into working designs," said Serge Leef, general manager,
System-on-Chip Verification Division, Mentor Graphics. "As a founding
member of the SPIRIT Consortium, Mentor has worked to evolve its tools
so designers can easily leverage a range of SPIRIT-compatible IP
blocks in their SoCs."
Platform Express is IP, bus and processor architecture, and design
tool agnostic, enabling designers to create multi-processor designs
with any mix of bus architectures and IP providers to add support for
their proprietary buses, processors and design tools. The tool
conducts all database processing functions at an XML level in an open
and infinitely extensible way. Additionally Platform Express is
accompanied by a wide range of generator functions to process both
SPIRIT and the Platform Express XML information, generating many
different representations of sophisticated SoC designs. Standard
generator functions include full Verilog and VHDL design creation;
testbench creation; level-one diagnostics software to execute on the
design; and HTML design documentation.
Designs created in the Platform Express tool are automatically
configured to leverage most popular verification tools including the
Mentor Graphics ModelSim(R) and Seamless(R) products.
Platform Express is available now and can be downloaded from the
Mentor Web site (www.mentor.com/platform_ex), to start designing with
the example IP libraries in just a few minutes. Availability of SPIRIT
XML support is scheduled for Q1 2005.
About SPIRIT
The Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within
Tool-flows (SPIRIT) consortium was created to develop a standard for
more efficient integration of IP in System-on-Chip (SoC) platform
design in two areas: IP meta-data description and a tool integration
API. The consortium is comprised of leading EDA, IP and system and
semiconductor companies, including ARM, Cadence Design Systems Inc.,
Mentor Graphics, Royal Philips Electronics, STMicroelectronics and
Synopsys, Inc. For more information or to become a member of SPIRIT
visit www.spiritconsortium.com
About Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq:MENT) is a world leader in
electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products,
consulting services and award-winning support for the world's most
successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in
1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of about
$675 million and employs approximately 3,800 people worldwide.
Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road,
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777; Silicon Valley headquarters are
located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California 95131-2314.
World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com/.
Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark and Platform Express is
a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or
product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their
respective owners.
Contact:
Mentor Graphics
Nathan James, 503-685-0449
nathan_james@mentor.com
or
Mentor Graphics
Sonia Harrison, 503-685-1165
sonia_harrison@mentor.com
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