ASPEC TECHNOLOGY AND SILVAR LISCO REACH ASIC TECHNOLOGY ACCORD

Portfolio Library New ASiC Technology Worldwide Standard Supports GARDS
High performance Place and Route System

Santa Clara, CA -- March 21, 1994 -- Aspec Technology, Inc., a provider of
enabling technology and services to application specific integrated
circuits (ASIC) users and semiconductor manufacturers, announced today a
cooperative technology accord with Silvar-Lisco, Sunnyvale, CA, a leading
developer and manufacturer of advanced EDA (Electronic Design Automation)
software tools for the design of ASICs and custom integrated circuits
(ICs). No dollar value was given for the agreement.

The accord provides for engineering-level cross support for the mutual
improvement of each company's products. The cooperation will ensure full
technological compatibility between Aspec's Portfolio Library and
Silvar-Lisco's place and route design tools. The accord also calls for
each company to be available as technical resources for each other's
customers.

The companies aim to establish Aspec's HDA technology as the industry ASIC
standard worldwide and Silvar-Lisco's GARDS as the place and route design
tool of choice for the industry. Because of their inherently fast time to
market and low cost attributes, the technologies singly and together are
expected to have a significant impact on the PC and peripherals industry.

Tony Wainwright, Silvar-Lisco's president and CEO, said, "This agreement
will help us bring a significant advanced capability to our customers.
Together we can make a difference in the market as we move into more
advanced designs -- with design accuracy, speed, and areal and functional
density benefits for those users under pressure to get products to market
faster at a lower cost. A design library closely coupled to a popular CAD
tool is a natural alliance and can become a strong weapon in the ASIC
user's arsenal."

Conrad Dell'Oca, president and chief executive officer of Aspec, said, "As
ASIC technology advances, it becomes more important to optimize the entire
design system tools, libraries and methodology. This relationship will
allow both companies to do this more effectively and efficiently." 

PRODUCTS

As Aspec's technology is expected to change the ASIC design paradigm,
Silvar-Lisco's GARDS opens the ASIC universe to the benefits of high
speed, deep sub-micron level designs at the highest densities.

Aspec's Portfolio library is a proven family of turnkey design tools that
utilizes Aspec's HDA (high density array) technology. Using Portfolio,
designers can independently create low-cost proprietary ASICs and ASSPs
from a standard and reliable architecture using advanced technology. The
product family includes a complete design library able to use third-party
CAD tools. User designs can then be multiple-sourced and produced by
third-party silicon suppliers, all with rapid design and production
turnaround, at lower cost.

Silvar-Lisco's GARDS Gate Array Design System family of high-performance
physical IC design products offer IC designers in the EDA industry high
capacity and fast automatic placement and routing of VLSI and ULSI
circuits, of up to one million gates. In benchmark studies conducted by
major semiconductor companies, the GARDS IV product completed the
placement and routing task for large Sea-of-Gates arrays between S and 20
times faster than competitive place and route tools.

ASPEC'S HDA TECHNOLOGY

The Aspec ASIC design technology provides turnkey design capability with
all methodology, technology libraries, software, compilers and megacells
necessary to design complex gate array or embedded array ASICs. The
Portfolio product line and services are built upon the proprietary HDA
(high-density array) industry-standard Sea of Gates architecture, of which
Aspec's implementation significantly increases the density over competing
architectures. A major feature of HDA is the design flexibility, as well
as the speed of design completion, lower power dissipation and reduced
chip costs. HDA technology features improved densities of 27% or greater
for any process technology, with over 500,000 available gates using 0.8
micron process -- the reason why Aspec gate arrays have been designed into
various high-volume personal computer and other digital signal processing
applications.

Silvar-Lisco's electronic design products are used by semiconductor and
electronic systems producers to automate the physical implementation of
circuit designs and accelerate the delivery of high-performance chips to
market. The company has sales and support offices in the United States,
Europe and Asia. Silvar-Lisco's common stock is traded on the NASD's - OTC
Bulletin Board under the symbol SVRL.

Aspec Technology, Inc. recently concluded a strategic agreement for its
technology with a leading European semiconductor manufacturer, Thesys
Microelectronics, based in Erfurt, Germany. The company has also signed
other overseas agreements with semiconductor suppliers Samsung
Semiconductor Corp., Seoul, Korea, and Sanyo Semiconductor Division,
Osaka, Japan. The entry of Aspec and its manufacturing partners in the
ASIC market creates a new ASIC power with an aggregated revenue rank in
the top 20 of ASIC suppliers. It is estimated that total design and
production bookings for the group approached $100 million in calendar
1993. Estimated bookings for 1994 exceed $200 million.

Aspec is a fast-growing, privately-held company that has been profitable
since its founding in late 1991. Conrad Dell'Oca, co-founder and inventor
of the Sea of Gates architecture, along with the other co-founders and top
management, are senior executive alumni of well-known major Silicon Valley
companies. The company's technology has been proven by over 150 ASIC
designs for various PC and peripheral OEMs. Aspec is located at 3901
Burton Drive, Santa Clara, CA, telephone 408/988-4411, fax 408/988-4767.

 ============================================================
 From the  'New Product Information'  Electronic News Service
 ============================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 above mentioned company. For additional details, contact 
 the company at the address or telephone number indicated.
 OmniPage Pro is now used for converting all printed input! 
 ============================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  U.S.A.
 Email: RBakerPC (AOL/Delphi), rbakerpc@delphi.com (Internet)
 ============================================================
