Next Generation Architecture Offers Speed, Capacity and
       Accuracy Required for the Industry's Toughest Designs

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 10, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Magma(R) Design
Automation Inc. (Nasdaq:LAVA), a provider of chip design software,
today unveiled Tekton(TM), a new timing analysis platform that offers
significantly higher capacity and dramatically faster runtimes than
traditional tools, without sacrificing accuracy. Unlike other
solutions, Tekton runs multi-scenario analysis efficiently on low-cost
hardware without requiring a large number of expensive servers and
software licenses. Leveraging breakthrough technology, this
revolutionary new platform addresses complex sign-off challenges and is
uniquely suited for today's most challenging designs.

"The complexity of timing sign-off has reached crisis proportions,
forcing design teams to re-evaluate resource planning, design
architectures and final sign-off solutions," said Premal Buch, general
manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "Capacity and
runtime limitations of current STA tools often force teams to sacrifice
accuracy to meet tight design schedules, or they must invest in
expensive servers and additional software licenses in an attempt to
achieve reasonable turnaround times. By enabling STA in just minutes
for the industry's biggest chips -- on a single machine -- Tekton is
truly the next-generation timing analysis platform."

Tekton: Fast, Accurate, High-Capacity Static Timing Analysis

Designed to more efficiently handle on-chip-variation (OCV), composite
current source (CCS) models and crosstalk analysis, Tekton overcomes
the speed, capacity and accuracy limitations of traditional static
timing analysis (STA) tools. It brings a new level of performance to
static timing analysis and extraction while maintaining complete flow
compatibility with existing STA tools.

Tekton meets the runtime, capacity and accuracy requirements for
sign-off through an architecture designed to accommodate more than 100
million instances and greater than 15 PVT corners. Traditional STA
solutions often take hours or days and numerous machines to deliver
results on complicated designs that have many analysis scenarios.
Tekton's multi-threaded architecture provides near-linear scaling on up
to 24 CPUs. For a single timing scenario, with OCV and crosstalk
enabled, Tekton performs timing analysis on designs greater than 10
million cells in minutes.

QCP: New Full-Chip Extractor

The Tekton platform includes QCP(TM), a fast, high-capacity, full-chip
extractor that delivers results with the accuracy of the industry
standard, QuickCap(R). QCP's architecture enables efficient
multi-corner extraction with minimal increases in runtime as additional
process, voltage and temperature (PVT) corners are added for each
process node migration. Built on a similar architecture to Tekton, QCP
is fully multi-threaded for near linear performance on up to 32 CPUs.
Tekton and QCP can be used together in a single STA timing session for
very fast and accurate "what-if" analysis for engineering change orders
(ECOs).

Tekton and QCP: Tight Integration Means Fewer and Faster ECO Loops

Today's complex chip designs require accurate timing analysis to be
performed across many scenarios (operating modes and PVT corners).
Coupling Tekton's timing analysis with QCP's extraction in a single
session allows designers to simultaneously iterate through the timing
closure process of analyzing, fixing and extracting nets. The ability
to make changes and get accurate timing results can drastically reduce
the amount of time spent in trial-and-error ECO loops.

Tekton Multi-Mode/Multi-Corner Analysis Speeds Turnaround Times and
Reduces Costs

Performing multi-mode/multi-corner or multi-scenario analysis using
traditional tools is time consuming, expensive and cumbersome. Design
teams are often forced to purchase many expensive servers and
accompanying software licenses to parallelize the multi-scenario
analysis in order to shorten run times. In some cases, design teams
resort to using abstracted timing models to accelerate the analysis,
but at the expense of accuracy. Tekton performs extremely fast,
multi-scenario analysis on a single machine and provides the accuracy
of existing sign-off solutions. Over a variety of designs with 5 to 50
scenarios enabled, Tekton performs timing analysis, with OCV and
crosstalk enabled, in less than one hour on a single CPU.

"To ensure we provide the highest quality of silicon, we analyze our
chips across many operating modes and PVT corners," said Jay Avula,
vice president of Technology at ServerEngines. "The amount of STA we
require puts our tapeout schedule at risk, and it will be only getting
worse. Tekton runtimes are truly exceptional. We believe Tekton will
meet our growing STA challenges without increasing our compute
resources."

"Today, companies are budgeting millions of dollars for hardware to
address the rapidly increasing number of STA scenarios," said Premal
Buch, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit.
"Tekton is the only STA solution that meets the multi-scenario analysis
problems of today and five years from now -- on a single machine
without any investment in new hardware."

Tekton Platform: Increasing Accuracy, Reducing the Timing Closure
Burden

To address the timing closure challenges design teams face at 40 nm and
below, Tekton supports advanced OCV (AOCV) margin reduction techniques.
By incorporating AOCV into timing closure flows, design teams can
minimize global pessimistic margins that lengthen tapeout schedules and
potentially increase die sizes. For critical path and net analysis,
Tekton and QCP offer high accuracy modes that leverage Tekton's
integrated SPICE engine and QCP's accurate extraction.

Availability

Tekton and QCP are in limited release. General availability will begin
in June 2010.

About Magma

Magma's electronic design automation (EDA) software provides the
"Fastest Path to Silicon"(TM) and enables the world's top chip
companies to create high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) for
cellular telephones, electronic games, WiFi, MP3 players, digital
video, networking and other electronic applications. Magma products are
used in IC implementation, analog/mixed-signal design, analysis,
physical verification, circuit simulation and characterization. The
company maintains headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and offices
throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Asia and India. Magma's stock
trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Follow Magma on Twitter
at www.Twitter.com/MagmaEDA and on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/Magma.
Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Magma, QuickCap and Talus are registered trademarks and "Fastest Path
to Silicon," QCP and Tekton are trademarks of Magma Design Automation
Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered
trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set
forth in this press release, including statements that Tekton and QCP
deliver faster, more accurate static timing analysis and extraction
than competitive products while using one machine, that the Tekton
tools will be generally available beginning in June 2010, and other
statements about the features and benefits of Magma software are
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor"
provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995.These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
including, but not limited to Magma's ability to keep pace with rapidly
changing technology and the company's products' abilities to produce
desired results. Further discussion of these and other potential risk
factors may be found in Magma's public filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). Magma undertakes no additional
obligation to update these forward-looking statements.


CONTACT:  Magma Design Automation
          Monica Marmie, Director, Marketing Communications 
          (408) 565-7689
          mmarmie@magma-da.com