April 2009 - TOOL Corp's LAVIS is Adopted by VDEC, University of Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan - April 6, 2009 - TOOL Corporation (headquarters in Tokyo Japan, president Hideaki Hontao) announced that "LAVIS", their layout visualization platform, has been adopted by VLSI Design and Education Center, University of Tokyo (VDEC). Since its establishment in 1996, VDEC has been committed to improving education on VLSI design and supporting research activities at national and public universities, private universities and technical junior colleges in Japan. It offers a variety of services on a nationwide basis, including distributing technical information on design, supporting chip fabrications and hosting design seminars. The adoption of LAVIS by VDEC will broaden the use of this platform in research and academic applications.

LAVIS is widely used as a layout viewer capable of displaying large LSI design data fast and efficiently. Because it is highly interoperable with other vendors' EDA tools and systems and supports various formats of design data and mask drawing devices, LAVIS can be used in all processes including design, verification, mask preparation, inspection, and failure analysis. Also, the double-via checking function, resistance calculation function and (optional) OASIS editing functions, which are all featured by the latest version, make LAVIS more popular as a "simple checker" or "simple editor".

"In the field of LSI research and development, the increase in design data size and the miniaturization of process technology have also led to growing demand for high-performance viewers that can load and display data at high speed," said Dr. Makoto Ikeda of VDEC, an associate professor. "LAVIS not only meets this need for high performance but also has a rich set of functions including node tracing. It is highly interoperable with other vendors' EDA tools and can also be used as a debugger. That is why we decided to adopt LAVIS."

"We are deeply honored that VDEC has adopted our LAVIS platform for use in LSI design R&D and education," said Hideaki Hontao, president of TOOL. "We intend to work more closely with research and academic institutes in order to contribute to the evolution of the increasingly promising LSI technology."

About LAVIS

LAVIS is a versatile and ultra-high speed layout visualization platform that supports large data and multiple file formats. Its unique display method, coupled with memory management technology, efficiently enables large volume data handling and fast display. Most importantly, LAVIS can be used as a common standard layout platform for all the IC processes such as design, verification, mask data preparation, inspection and failure analysis, thanks to its capability to support various data formats, including GDSII, OASIS, LEF/DEF and e-beam thereby making it easy to interface with other tools for the entire IC making flow.

About TOOL

TOOL is a Japanese software development company focused primarily on EDA tool development. Its particular strength is in the area of layout design, and has scored a number of achievements in this area with its development tool, LAVIS and MaskStudio. Solutions to chipmakers' problems can be provided by combining TOOL’s package-software with its custom-tailored software developed to serve a customer’s particular need. TOOL provides ample experience in this particular area. For more information on TOOL and products, please refer to http://www.tool-corp.com/.

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