Mentor Graphics and HP Team Up on Questa CDC Deployment

WILSONVILLE, Ore. - Mentor Graphics Corp. (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that Hewlett-Packard Co. has selected Questa® CDC as their corporate-wide standard solution for clock-domain crossing (CDC) verification and have successfully deployed the methodology across multiple projects in collaboration with the Mentor® technology experts.

“We are extremely pleased with the results of our work with Mentor Graphics to deploy Questa CDC on our SoC designs,” stated Bill Doss, ASIC program manager, Industry Standard Server Division, HP. “Mentor’s industry-leading tools and highly skilled consultants significantly matured our organization’s ability to perform complete and accurate CDC verification. We are confident that we are now rooting out all CDC problems early in the development phase.”

HP develops some of the world’s most highly integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs that are in the range of hundreds of millions of logic gates in size and contain hundreds of clock domains. While the CDC verification challenges continue to mount, technology companies such as HP face shrinking time-to-market windows and cannot afford the risk of CDC design flaws leading to silicon re-spins.

“The clocking complexity of our designs demands a rigorous approach to CDC verification,” said Larry Hufty, ASIC program manager, Networking Division, HP. “Mentor not only delivered the best tools for the job, but also worked with us to define the customized methodology that we needed to support our design styles.”

Questa CDC is widely used as the gold-standard for CDC-signoff checking before tapeout, and its versatility enables it to be deployed across the full range of designs from SoCs to FPGAs allowing for consistent, company-wide methodologies. Questa CDC is one of many formal-based applications supported by the Questa platform, that range from fully automatic formal checking that everyone can easily use, to property checking with custom coded assertions for advanced users. The Questa platform includes an array of verification capabilities seamlessly blending simulation and formal-based technologies with common compilation and user interface features, as well as the Unified Coverage Database (UCDB).

“The Questa CDC solution is comprehensive and continues to set the standard for CDC verification best practices,” said Roger Sabbagh, product marketing manager, Questa Formal-based Technologies, Mentor Graphics. “Deploying Questa CDC in collaboration with technology leaders like HP, on some of the industry’s most progressive designs, helps us to continually improve the tools and methodology.”

About the Questa Verification Platform

The Questa Verification Platform uniquely provides a comprehensive solution that addresses the SoC verification explosion with a platform comprised of advanced verification methodologies, high performance simulation, intelligent testbench automation, software/hardware unified debug, formal, CDC, low power, analog-mixed signal, VIP, a central unified database and automated analysis tools, as well as integrated flows with ESL and emulation.

(Mentor Graphics, Mentor, 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.)

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation 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 electronic, semiconductor and systems companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues in the last fiscal year of about $1,015 million. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com.