EDA Standards Organizations Accellera and The SPIRIT Consortium Announce Plans to Merge

-- Two leading Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry organizations, Accellera and The SPIRIT Consortium, announced today that the organizations' Boards have agreed to a merger of the two entities. The union improves the development of language-based and IP standards.

Accellera is the leading standards organization developing language-based standards used by system, semiconductor, Intellectual Property (IP) and EDA companies. The SPIRIT Consortium is the leading standards organization focused on developing standards for IP deployment and reuse.

"Within our organizations there are several areas where we are very complementary and close cooperation will be beneficial. Both organizations are aligned on the path to formal standards through the IEEE," remarked Ralph von Vignau, President of The SPIRIT Consortium. "With this merger we can use our resources, both human and infrastructure, more effectively to develop and deploy industry-driven standards."

"Our plans to merge benefit the worldwide electronic design community by combining our visions and leveraging our operational strengths in developing and delivering EDA and IP standards," added Shrenik Mehta, Accellera Chair. "The merged organization with its broad and diverse participation base is well positioned to develop future standards that meet the needs of the industry."

The merged organization will be called Accellera and The SPIRIT Consortium name will continue to be associated with the organization's ongoing IP standardization efforts. The merged organizations will work towards a greater cooperation with other standardization groups in the industry. Further details of the merger will be announced at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco, the week of July 27, 2009.

The two organizations currently have eight standardization subcommittees operating. These standards include: SystemRDL™ (Register Description Language), IPtagging, Interface Technical Committee (ITC), Open Verification Library (OVL), Unified Coverage Interoperability (UCI), Verilog Analog/Mixed Signal (AMS), Verification IP (VIP) and IP-XACT™.

For membership information, please email lynnh@accellera.org.

About The SPIRIT Consortium Standards

The SPIRIT Consortium is defining an open standard for a development framework upon which a SoC development flow, from components to chip, can be built allowing distribution and use of IP from varied sources as well as the free choice of tools used in the SoC development. The definitions are consolidated in the IP-XACT Specification which provides a standard XML schema for language and vendor neutral descriptions of IP, as well as generator interfaces for plug-in functionality. SystemRDL 1.0, a language for the design and delivery of registers to be used in IP blocks within electronic designs, interoperates with IP-XACT to enhance the management and creation of registers in complex designs.

About Accellera's Electronic Design Standards

Accellera transfers its completed standards work to the IEEE and continues to use this strategy as part of the roadmap for all of its standards. To date, 10 Accellera EDA standards have been ratified by the IEEE:

• Verilog or IEEE 1364;
• VHDL or IEEE1076;
• Property Specification Language (PSL) or IEEE 1850;
• SystemVerilog or IEEE 1800;
• Standard Delay Format (SDF) or IEEE 1497;
• Delay and Power Calculation System (DPCS) or IEEE 1481;
• Advanced Library Format (ALF) or IEEE 1603;
• Open Compression Interface (OCI) or IEEE 1450;
• Unified Power Format (UPF) or IEEE P1801;
• Open Model Interface (OMI) or IEEE 1499.

The SPIRIT Consortium is a global organization focused on establishing multi-faceted IP/tool integration standards that drive sustainable growth in electronic design. It is comprised of leading EDA, IP, system integration and semiconductor companies dedicated to the adoption of a unified set of specifications for configuring, integrating, and verifying IP in advanced SoC design tool sets. For more information on The SPIRIT Consortium and its goals, please visit www.spiritconsortium.org.

About Accellera

Accellera provides design and verification standards for quick availability and use in the electronics industry. The organization and its members cooperatively deliver much-needed EDA standards that lower the cost of designing commercial IC and EDA products. As a result of Accellera's partnership with the IEEE, Accellera standards are provided to the IEEE standards body for formalization and ongoing change control. For more information about Accellera, please visit www.accellera.org.