Design And Reuse expands intellectual property (IP) technical service offering through purchase of Simutech's Rave Prototyper Technology

Paris, France - March 27, 2000 -  DATE 2000 Conference -  Design & Reuse (D&R) has announced plans that it will broaden the range of technical services that it already offers in order to support the Simutech RAVE Prototyper[tm] system for IP evaluation. Of particular interest to D&R is the bus-based nature of the RAVE solution which is ideally suited to the in-system evaluation of IP and the Java based client server architecture which makes remote technical evaluations possible.

D&R already hosts a large catalog of IP components and has seen increasing demands from end users to be able to support more qualitative methods of assessing the suitability of that IP for specific end user requirements. These methods usually require the IP to be hosted in real silicon, and often to be assessed using real world testbenches or test coverage metrics which demand a high performance (multi-mhz) evaluation environment.

D&R New Service Offerings

A range of new services are envisioned based on the RAVE technology. These include:

• Mapping of IP onto FPGA based CoreBoards[tm],
• Creation of hard IP CoreBoards using bonded out silicon ICs,
• Evaluation of IP with IP Providers testbenches,
• Evaluation and enhancement of IP test coverage through testbenches,
• Model and property checking following specific customer requirements.

RAVE includes an 'IP Rack' that can host up to 31 CoreBoards supporting both hard and soft IP in a bonded out core or in an FPGA form, with anywhere from 1 to 10 components hosted on each CoreBoard. In addition, IP pairs and full in-system evaluations, such as a processor, a peripheral or a complete platform with real world interfaces can be performed across multiple CoreBoards leveraging RAVE's patent pending time multiplexed backplane.

Improvement in Quality of Technical Decision Making

"D&R has considerable experience in both FPGA based systems and Internet based IP selection. Simutech's RAVE will allow us to bring technical services, based on our Partners' IP products, into the hands of end users via the Internet," commented Gabriele Saucier, founder and chairman of the board of Design and Reuse. "We anticipate the Internet capabilities to be used initially for IP Providers to validate that their IP has been successfully mapped on to the FPGA CoreBoard in the RAVE system successfully and that end users may be allowed access to evaluate IP under their own conditions."

"Simutech is well aware of the large community of IP interested parties who visit the D&R website," commented Steve Glaser, vice president of Marketing, Simutech. "We are pleased that such a community will be able to utilize the RAVE technology for one of its major purposes; to assist in rapid technical decision making between geographically remote groups."

About Design & Reuse

D&R was founded in September 1997 with a 19% shareholding from CMP Inc. D&R is the web portal for IP and SoC's that will facilitate the first Internet IP trading center by end of Q1 2000. D&R also provides IP exchange internet/intranet exchange technology and IP validation services. D&R can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.design-reuse.com.

About Simutech

Simutech is focused on providing desktop IP and internet-based evaluation and verification tools to leading electronics systems, semiconductor, and IP companies. Simutech's products enable IP evaluation, hardware-software co-development, and full SoC verification. Its mission is to help bring SoC to the mainstream designers by providing a new generation of relatively low-cost, easy-to-use solutions to address the largest bottlenecks to system-on-a-chip design. For more information about Simutech, please visit http://www.simutech.com

Note: RAVE Prototyper, CoreBoard, and Simutech are trademarks of Simutech, Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks, or services of their respective companies. Copyright 2000 Simutech, Inc.