WILSONVILLE, Ore. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — June 4, 2012 — Mentor Graphics Corp. (NASDAQ: MENT) announced support for the newly approved Accellera Systems Initiative Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (UCIS) version 1.0 via the Questa^® UCIS API library. Mentor made the original donation of the Questa Unified Coverage Database (UCDB) application programming interface (API) specification, which was selected as the basis for the now ratified standard.

The UCIS API allows utilities to be developed to perform ranking, merging, analysis and reporting that is vendor independent. Within the Questa verification platform, this database API has been used as the basis of the Questa Verification Management (VM) tools, which include these utilities plus many more higher-level applications such as testplan tracking, trend analysis, results analysis and regression management. In addition to the standard coverage models for all metrics generated by Mentor tools, the API supports third-party and user coverage access to the Questa Unified Coverage Database (UCDB). This openness allows users and partners to bring coverage data from other languages and tools into the UCDB.

“Managing the verification process and achieving coverage closure rank at the top of today’s verification challenges,” said John Lenyo, vice president and general manager of the Design Verification Technology division of Mentor Graphics. “Mentor was pleased to work with the committee to finalize the standard to realize our vision. Mentor joins our customers to celebrate the formal approval of the Accellera UCIS standard, as an important piece of a comprehensive coverage solution.”

“We applaud Mentor’s support of the UCIS standard, a standard that grew from Mentor’s UCDB technology donation to Accellera,” said Shishpal Rawat, chair of Accellera Systems Initiative. "Managing the ever growing amount of verification information from multiple sources to improve the verification closure process is an industry imperative that adoption of this standard helps address."

Questa Vanguard Partnership (QVP) program participants have immediate access to the Questa implementation of the UCIS API to access the coverage database to promote sharing of verification results and help users determine if their verification goals have been met using the Questa VM solution. Adoption of the standard is enhanced with a migration path from the original UCDB API to the UCIS API that allows current integrations continued access to existing UCDB databases. QVP members have immediate access to Questa VM extensions like testplan management that offer another level of integration beyond what is supported by the standard today.

“Test and Verification Solutions’ asureVIP™ development program has seen vast improvements in productivity, efficiency and delivery quality using Questa VM built on UCDB, the basis for UCIS,” said Mike Bartley, founder and CEO of TVS. “With the presence of this fundamental enabling technology, now a standard, it relieves us of the need to develop complex scripts to manage coverage output.”

To learn more, visit the Mentor Graphics booth #1530 and the Verification Academy booth #1514 at the Design Automation Conference June 4-6, 2012 in San Francisco, CA. The Verification Academy booth features UVM applications and daily discussions with Harry Foster and other prominent verification experts and standards developers. Visit http://verificationacademy.com/ for more information.

About UCIS

UCIS is a first step towards the creation of a unified coverage database that allows for interoperability of verification coverage data across multiple tools from multiple vendors. With the growing complexity of chip design, coverage metrics are critical to measuring and guiding design verification. UCIS offers chip designers a standardized way to model and access information among different tools to achieve full verification closure. UCIS allows users to write their own applications, access information, analyze, grade, merge, and report coverage from one or more databases from one or more tool vendors. The standard is built on an open API, which provides a path to exchange coverage databases without requiring a common code library between tools and vendors.

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/.

(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.)

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