Tanner EDA Releases Tool Interoperability and Design Reuse Capabilities for IC Designers

PASADENA, Calif., May 8, 2000 - Tanner EDA, the leading supplier of integrated circuit design tools for PC platforms, announces a new release of L-Edit[tm], Tanner's market leading layout editor. Tanner Tools are an increasingly attractive alternative in the marketplace, and IC design firms both large and small are discovering that by using Tanner products productivity can vastly be improved at a much lower cost than with other tools.

 L-Edit V8.2 provides a number of important enhancements for design teams making use of predefined cell libraries or performing cell library development. Library cells and cores are the starting point for many designs, often treated as read-only components by the design engineer. The new workgroup features enable designers to easily establish links to external cell libraries. Components are easily brought from a library into a design, while maintaining a link to the original library cell. Library changes are tracked for the designer, who can then choose to either accept the update or keep the cell as originally referenced in the design.

 The new version provides significant improvements in design exchange, providing additional flexibility for interchanging data between design teams using different EDA tools. Essentially, this release supports library references during design export and import as well as advanced support for cell properties. These developments enable L-Edit to function in a dynamic environment with multiple design tools. Large numbers of companies are finding they can significantly increase their productivity at a reasonable cost by placing a copy of L-Edit on every engineer's desk. The new capabilities of L-Edit V8.2 ensures that the tool can exchange data in any environment of tools. Dr. Scott Wedge, Tanner EDA's Director of Marketing reveals, "In many company settings we are seeing large numbers of L-Edit being used for cell/core design along with a few copies of Cadence or Avant! for SoC integration."

 L-Edit's Key Features
L-Edit is a full-featured, high performance, interactive, graphical mask layout editor. This full custom editor is fast, easy to use, completely hierarchical, and affordable. It includes integrated DRC, Extract, and Standard Cell Place and Route modules, and it reads and writes industry standard GDSII and CIF file formats. Designers can maximize their productivity with L-Edit Pro's powerful custom layout editor and physical verification tools.

 Tanner EDA Background
Tanner EDA is a division of Tanner Research, Inc., a privately held company with worldwide distribution and offices located in both Pasadena and Sunnyvale, California. Tanner EDA specializes in producing innovative software solutions on Windows NT/95/98 and Unix platforms that are affordable and easy to use for IC design entry, simulation, layout, and verification. Tanner's technologically robust products give designers the productivity needed to quickly and accurately cycle through the design process. Tanner EDA software provides a quality product, backed with tenacious customer support, and an outstanding combination of price and performance. With over 12,000 licenses in more than 35 countries, for meeting their design needs, many designers rely exclusively on Tanner Tools. For more information about Tanner EDA please visit our website www.tanner.com/eda.