Accellera and Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) Approve Merger, Unite to Form Accellera Systems Initiative

Adopt Charter to Create EDA & IP Standards to Benefit Electronic & Semiconductor Industries

NAPA, CA-- Dec 5, 2011- Accellera and the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI), two industry organizations focused on the creation and adoption of electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) standards, announced that their members and Boards have approved their merger, and they have united to form Accellera Systems Initiative. The new organization leverages the complementary efforts of both organizations and is chartered to create comprehensive system-level and semiconductor design standards to benefit the electronic design community by facilitating efficient collaboration among its worldwide members.

The convergence of system, software and semiconductor design activities to meet the increasing challenges of creating complex system-on-chips (SoCs) has brought to the forefront the need for a single organization like Accellera Systems Initiative to create new IP and EDA standards.

"Our new organization is chartered to address the growing and complex needs of the semiconductor and electronics industries by developing electronic design standards that allow them to create and manufacture products quickly in our rapidly changing market place," said Shishpal Rawat, Accellera Systems Initiative chair. "With our newly combined organization, we can efficiently accelerate the development of system-level and IP standards across multiple design environments, to increase electronic design productivity and lower the cost of designing ICs and embedded systems."

"Our unification and collaborative standards' plans are significant steps that better address the needs of the system and semiconductor design communities worldwide," added OSCI chair Eric Lish. "Accellera Systems Initiative gives our members and stakeholders a better way to improve and extend their SystemC design productivity with industry standards that encompass system-level, RTL and gate-level design flows and IP."

What Others Are Saying
"As Accellera and OSCI come together, we should expect accelerated development and adoption of standards across various ESL domains," said Gary Smith, industry analyst at Gary Smith EDA.

"Standardized interoperability and collaboration and exchange of information are all necessary to promote innovation. The IEEE Standards Association notes that the EDA industry has benefited over the years from the technical work achieved by both organizations including the development of eight IEEE standards. We look forward to the continued work of the Accellera Systems Initiative to develop EDA and IP standards that elevate designer productivity and set the foundation to build the next generation of electronic products," said Judith Gorman, managing director, IEEE Standards Association.

About Accellera Systems Initiative Standards Activities
As part of the merger, Accellera and OSCI standards development activities will continue and evolve based on synergies and collaborative efforts. As a result of its partnership with the IEEE, Accellera Systems Initiative standards are transferred to the IEEE Standards Association for formalization and ongoing change control.

Ongoing Accellera Systems Initiative activities include:

• IP-XACT™ metadata standard for IP integration
• IP Tagging for data-driven tracking of soft IP
• Universal Verification Methodology (UVM™) standard
• SystemC language standard
• Analog/Mixed-Signal extensions to Verilog (Verilog-AMS)
• Analog/Mixed-Signal extensions to SystemC
• Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (UCIS) for verification coverage interoperability
• Configuration, Control and Inspection (CCI) standards for exchanging information between SystemC models and tools
• Synthesizable subset of SystemC
• Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) standards for modeling systems based on memory-mapped busses in SystemC
• SystemC Verification (SCV) library
• Standard for Co-Emulation Modeling Interface (SCE-MI)
• Open Verification Library (OVL) assertion library.

For more information on these standards, please visit www.accellera.org.

About Accellera Systems Initiative
Accellera Systems Initiative is an independent, not-for profit organization, dedicated to create, support, promote and advance system-level design, modeling and verification standards for use by the worldwide electronics industry. The organization accelerates standards development and as part of its ongoing partnership with the IEEE, its standards are contributed to the IEEE Standards Association for formal standardization and ongoing change control. For more information, please visit www.accellera.org. For membership information, please email membership@accellera.org.