Solution-Soft Announces General Availability of gdzip™ and mezip™

Santa Clara, Calif., December 6, 2002 – Solution-Soft Systems, Inc., a global leader in virtual clock and time travel testing solutions today announced the general release of gdzipTM and mezipTM, specialized file compressors for GDSII and MEBES file formats. The GDSII stream is the standard exchange format between the design world and the mask shops. The MEBES format is the most commonly used format for the electron beam lithography and photomask production.

Semiconductor design files are becoming larger almost daily as their feature sets grow. The use of tools such as Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) further expands the size. It is now common to have designs in the Gigabyte (GB) range for both GDSII and MEBES files. In 2002, the maximum MEBES data volume for a single layer was about 100 GB this is predicted to double over the next two years.

Fabless design houses, foundries, mask shops and tool vendors send and receive numerous design files, in these formats, daily while maintaining legacy versions of each. The sheer size of these GDSII and MEBES files causes issues in file transfer, manipulation, and storage.

Achieving compression ratios of 2-to-10 times more than any other available solution, gdzip and mezip significantly reduce the transfer time and storage requirement for users of these file types. Issues that in the past increased the tape out cycle time, such as prolonged large file transfers are relieved. Decreasing the file size also provides the benefits of reducing the disk capacity needed to store design files and allowing for greater reliability of transmission, as the likelihood of errors and line drops diminishes.

“Our compressors for GDSII and MEBES files have achieved great success in the semiconductor industry. We currently have numerous installations from the worlds largest chip foundries, which both use and promote our product to their tape out customers, to a large of number of mask shops and many chip design houses.” said Paul Wang, CTO at Solution-Soft. “Our most recent move to extend the markets for our products has been the development of an Application Programming Interface (API) set for both of these compressors at the request of various EDA and EB writer vendors. This API allows tool vendors to access compressed files at run time while leaving the files compressed on disk. The files can now remain compressed throughout the workflow: design rule checking, CATS, OPC, viewer, and EB writer, enabling greater transportability and storability of the designs.”

About Solution-Soft

Solution-Soft is the leader in virtual clock, time shift testing software solutions for the ever-changing digital world. Our flagship and market proven product, Time Machine, opened up brand new possibilities in the application testing landscape upon its release in 1997. Today, thousands of applications have been tested with Time Machine, and IT professionals recognize that using a virtual clock is the ideal and safest way to conduct date and time testing. As pioneer in our field, we've created the Time Machine Product Suite and Time Machine for Container, a collection of cutting-edge testing software that augment Time Machine to further streamline enterprise cloud initiatives, containerization, micro services, and IT modernization for end-to-end integration testing, cloud migration, test automation, Agile/DevOPs, Continuous Operation, and Test Data Management. We proudly provide our 2000+ domestic and international customers, including 47 of Fortune 100 companies, with our advanced solutions to optimize their testing and help deliver projects on-time. Solution-Soft's customers are across all market sectors including 3M, AMEX, AIG, Australia Tax Office, BBC, Boeing, British Gas, Covered California, Department of Works & Pension, Deutsche Bank, Discover, FedEx, Federal Reserve Bank, Orange, National Australia Bank, SNCF, and Zurich Insurance. We bolster our market presence through robust partnerships with companies including Accenture, Capgemini, DXC, HPE, IBM, Infosys, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, and RedMane.

Founded in 1993, Solution-Soft is privately held and based in Santa Clara, CA, for more information visit www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1400.

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