VOV Improves and Automates Design Management For EDA Users and Software Designers

Sunnyvale, CA --August 26, 1996-- Runtime Design Automation, a new electronic design automation (EDA) company, today announced that its first product, VOV, is now shipping for UNIX design environments. VOV is a design flow manager that helps designers deal with the complexity of their design process by controlling and managing their design files, design tools, and network computing resources more efficiently.

VOV's services increase designer productivity, reduce the number of design iterations, and insure a safer design process, especially in the critical last stages of a design. It is for designers who are using multiple tools and resources to design complex software and/or hardware systems.

According to company founder and president, Andrea Casotto, Ph.D., "During the last five years, we have tested run-time tracing in a number of design environments. We developed VOV to answer our customers requests to improve the management of their complex design flows. Saving time and using the right files and resources at the right time is a concern of our users. These customers need technology for managing their design processes automatically and efficiently, and a design management system, like VOV, that manages file dependencies transparently."

Run-Time Tracing:Using a technique called run-time tracing, VOV automatically builds a complete graph of all dependencies between the files and the tools involved in the design process. VOV uses this dependency graph to provide innovative services such as, documentation and visualization of the design flow, representation of the design status, and warnings for any attempt to use invalid files. Because the dependency graph also represents the design flow, VOV uses it to automatically manage and control the propagation of the latest design changes by invoking tools in the correct order. Since the VOV dependency graph captures parallelism, VOV can also provide network computing services, including resource management, priority scheduling, queuing, load sharing, and load balancing.

VOV and Design Tools: Runtime's approach reduces the design management problem to one of extracting dependency information directly from the design tools at run-time. There are two techniques used to do this: encapsulation and integration. When a tool is encapsulated, a wrapper computes the inputs and outputs of the tool, communicates them to VOV and then calls the tool. For most design tools, encapsulation takes a few minutes or a few hours. Many commercial design tools and software development tools are already encapsulated.

Integration, the better embodiment of the principles of run-time tracing, is an option for all those who have source code access. Integration of a tool normally requires less than one hour. Runtime Design Automation has worked with several tool suppliers and users to integrate their design tools.

Run Time Design Automation also offers an integration kit so that users can integrate proprietary tools themselves.

Pricing and Availability: VOV for UNIX workstations (Sun-OS and Solaris, HAL, HP-UX, Linux, AIX-4.1) is shipping now. Prices start at $10,000 (US). For more information, visit Runtime's Web site at http://www.rtda.com or contact Runtime Design Automation, 1208 Apollo Way #508, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, 408-524-0461, FAX: 408-481-9873, info@rtda.com.

(Current location: 3155 Kearney Street #130, Fremont, CA 94538-2268 - Phone: (510) 770-0300, Fax: (510) 770-3930)