Mentor Graphics’ Olympus-SoC Place-and-Route System Wins 2009 DesignVision Award

WILSONVILLE, Ore., February 13, 2009 – Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that the company’s Olympus-SoC™ place-and-route system has won the 2009 DesignVision Award in the IC Design Tools category, presented last week at DesignCon 2009. The DesignVision Awards program celebrates the premier design tools and products judged to be the most unique and beneficial to the semiconductor industry. The winners were chosen by members of the DesignCon 2009 Technical Program Committee, who are experts from the semiconductor and electronic design engineering community (see www.designcon.com/2009/).

”We’re happy that the DesignCon organization has recognized the Olympus-SoC system as an innovative step forward in place-and-route,” said Pravin Madhani, general manager of Mentor’s place-and-route group. “At 45 nm and beyond, tough challenges in physical design of SoCs require a new approach to place-and-route architecture. We anticipated these when we designed the Olympus-SoC product and feel we definitely have a unique solution that addresses our customers’ biggest P&R issues.”

Last October, Mentor announced the Olympus-SoC Parallel Timing Analysis and Optimization technology, making Olympus-SoC the only place-and-route system providing true concurrent multi-corner multi-mode optimization with a fully parallelized core timing engine. This enables the Olympus product to scale effectively on multicore and multiprocessor computing platforms. Parallel Timing Analysis and Optimization enables Olympus-SoC to maintain fast turnaround times for rapid closure of new IC designs with upwards of 100 million gates and a large number of modes and corners.

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 $850 million and employs approximately 4,450 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com/.

(Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark and Olympus-SoC is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners).

For more information, please contact:

Gene Forte
Mentor Graphics
503.685.1993
gene_forte@mentor.com

Sonia Harrison
Mentor Graphics
503.685.1165
sonia_harrison@mentor.com