Mentor Graphics Adds AMBA 4 Verification IP to the Questa Multi-view Verification Components Library

WILSONVILLE, Ore., March 9, 2010 - Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that the quickly-growing library of Questa® Multi-view Verification Components (MVCs) has been expanded to support phase one of the AMBA® 4 specification, recently announced by ARM. Phase one of the AMBA 4 specification includes AMBA 4 AXI, AXI-Stream and AXI-Lite interfaces, allowing increased functionality and efficiency for complex, media-rich, on-chip communication. The Questa MVC library dramatically improves verification coverage and helps speed the functional verification of integrated circuits (ICs) using industry standard protocols. As a result, users of MVCs can expect to see an improved time to market and a higher quality product.

By adding support for AMBA 4, the Questa MVC library continues to provide a leading- edge, comprehensive solution for verifying ARM AMBA-based platforms. Using the Questa MVC library, designers can rapidly verify correct interpretation of the new specification and be assured of a successful integration with other IP. This allows less time to be spent developing the interface logic, and more time to be spent on the key differentiating functionality within the design.

“Our AMBA MVCs have proved very popular and by supporting the latest AMBA 4 specification, we are continuing to provide a complete verification solution for AMBA-based designs,” said Stephen Bailey, director of product marketing for the Design Verification Technology division of Mentor. “Users of MVCs can expect to see an improved time to market and a higher quality product thanks to features such as a verification plan with full coverage metrics, a comprehensive test suite with transaction and protocol stack debugging and full support for OVM.”

Questa MVCs
With Questa MVCs, a verification team can connect to any level of abstraction from system to gates—ensuring consistent model behavior and giving them more options to improve performance and increase coverage. The Questa MVC technology also greatly reduces the labor intensive and error prone manual interpretation of signal activity. This allows simulation results, from RTL verification, to be viewed as sequences of initiated transactions and responses, with the RTL signal activity correlated to a higher level transaction view of activity.

Availability
Questa MVC support for phase one of the AMBA 4 specification is available immediately for select customers.

Questa Functional Verification Platform
The Questa functional verification platform combines high performance and high capacity with the most comprehensive verification capabilities in the industry. Assertion-based Verification (ABV), intelligent testbench automation, Multi-view Verification Components (MVCs), and Coverage-driven Verification (CDV) are supported natively by the Questa platform’s high-performance assertion engine; a modern, high-performance constraint solver; and extensive functional coverage features, including verification management leveraging the Unified Coverage Database (UCDB). Verification of low power design functionality can be proven in an RTL environment with power-aware functional verification. This full set of advanced verification functionality is enabled by a flexible Open Verification Methodology (OVM) that delivers unrivaled language and feature support in any design and verification flow.

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 $800 million and employs approximately 4,425 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com/.

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(Mentor, Mentor Graphics and Questa are registered trademarks of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.)