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Technology Stocks : MENTOR GRAPHICS -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (355)	9/25/2000 12:15:20 PM
From: Ram Seetharaman	Respond to of 376

MENT is looking good - ambling towards $ 30+ - Monday September 25, 9:00 am Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corp. Mentor Graphics and Enea OSE Systems Join Forces to Deliver the New Standard In High-End Embedded Real Time Development EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Setting the new standard in high-end embedded real time development and debug, Mentor Graphics Corp. (Nasdaq: MENT - news) and Enea OSE Systems today announced an agreement to provide customers with a single source for best-in- class software development and debugging tools for high-availability, high- reliability embedded applications. Recognizing the importance of software development tools as part of a complete real-time operating system (RTOS) solution, Enea OSE Systems will market and distribute an integrated solution comprised of the Mentor Graphics® XRAY® debugger, the OSE® RTOS, and support for Mentor Graphics Microtec and GNU and Diab compilers. Customers will now have access to the most comprehensive software development suite for today's challenging embedded systems environments, including complex distributed, multi-processor systems and heterogeneous multi-core environments. This collaboration will provide a best-in-class RTOS and integrated software development solution for high-growth, vertical market segments, including telephony infrastructure and safety-critical systems. ``By joining forces with Mentor Graphics, we are able to offer our customers the embedded industry's most comprehensive solution for RTOS-based application development,'' said Lars Osterberg, president, Enea OSE Systems. ``Our tightly integrated development tool suite will enable engineers to develop even the most challenging RTOS applications, for the most demanding environments.'' XRAY's state-of-the-art feature set, designed to enhance the development of applications based on realtime operating systems, includes such features as RTOS object browsing, thread and process awareness with window-per-thread visibility, and support for the unified debugging of multi-processor systems. XRAY also supports most popular compilers including Microtec, GNU and Diab. The XRAY Debugger product line includes versions to support BDM, JTAG, emulators, processor probes and other hardware-assist solutions, target resident monitors, and instruction-set simulators. XRAY provides a common interface to the complete set of tools for debugging embedded applications, improving developer productivity and eliminating the need to learn multiple user interfaces. ``With this integration, we have laid the groundwork for a development roadmap that extends beyond our initial collaboration,'' said Michael Kaskowitz, vice president and general manager, Mentor Graphics Embedded Software division. ``As the market dictates, we will work towards providing additional state of the art tools while continuing to offer the most complete, end-to-end development environment for high-end embedded systems.'' XRAY for OSE is also tightly integrated with the OSE Illuminator tool suite, enabling comprehensive application-level debugging, essential in high-availability telecommunications systems. With XRAY for OSE, embedded systems developers will now be able to produce higher quality applications while reducing development time and costs. The OSE RTOS supports fault-tolerant systems that are designed to allow recovery from hardware and software failures. OSE differs from other RTOSs by adopting message-passing as its primary method of inter-process communication. Because of its support for high-availability systems, OSE has a particularly significant impact in the telecommunications industry. ``This collaboration comes in response to the high demand for an integrated, high-performance RTOS and tools integration in numerous vertical market segments,'' said Jerry Krasner, Ph.D., executive director for Electronic Market Forecasters, a research firm specializing in embedded software/systems industry analysis. About Enea OSE Systems Enea OSE Systems is the technological leader for realtime operating systems and development tools for building distributed and fault-tolerant real-time applications. A subsidiary of Enea Data (SAXESS: ENEA), Enea OSE Systems employs over 150 people. The company focuses primarily on development in telecommunications, data communications, wireless and safety-critical industries. For more information on Enea OSE Systems, please visit enea.com . About Mentor Graphics Corp. Mentor Graphics Corporation is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products and consulting services for the world's largest electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $500 million and employs approximately 2,600 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon, 97070-7777, Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California, 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com. NOTE: Mentor Graphics and XRAY are registered trademarks of Mentor Graphics Corporation. OSE is a registered trademark of Enea OSE Systems. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corp.

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (355)	9/29/2000 4:42:29 PM
From: Ram Seetharaman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 376

BBRS rates MENT as a "buy" - with a 6 - 12 month price of $ 32. cnetinvestor.com

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (355)	10/2/2000 9:22:34 AM
From: Ram Seetharaman	Respond to of 376

Monday October 2, 9:01 am Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corporation Mentor Graphics Announces Availability of FastScan 2001 Major Enhancements Provide Designers With a Design-for-Test Solution That Handles Next-Generation Requirements INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE, ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT - news) announced today its latest automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) tool, FastScan(TM) 2001. FastScan 2001 contains significant new functionality that reduces test pattern sizes by as much as 60 percent and also provides new capabilities for testing small embedded memories and other macros that are common in today's system-on-chip (SoC) designs. These new features play a significant role in reducing the total cost of test as well as improving overall test coverage for microprocessor designs, ASICs, and application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Reducing Test Patterns The trend to multi-million gate designs is resulting in test vector sets that are exceeding limits of the Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) or limits set by ASIC vendors or foundries. Companies are faced with costly ATE upgrades or the need to truncate the test patterns, which results in reduced fault coverage and can compromise product quality. FastScan 2001 delivers new ATPG pattern compression capabilities specifically targeted at designs that contain multiple clocks, now standard in telecom, wireless and networking applications. With this new multi-clock compression capability, FastScan 2001 delivers significant value to ASIC and fabless semiconductor designers by allowing them to stay within maximum testing limitations set by their ASIC vendor or foundry without adding additional cost or truncating test patterns. Testing Embedded Blocks Complex SoC designs today often include hundreds of small embedded memories that are not large enough to justify built-in self-test (BIST) approaches. Often these blocks as well as the surrounding shadow logic remain untested, reducing the overall test coverage. FastScan MacroTest offers unique DFT capabilities that allow designers to automatically test these small, embedded memory blocks and the shadow logic using existing scan chains. FastScan 2001 extends the capabilities of MacroTest by adding support for synchronous macros (e.g., synchronous RAM). As a result, FastScan MacroTest can now be used on a broader set of designs, enabling designers to improve test coverage and product quality without adding additional test logic. ``We have seen a growing need for DFT tools to meet more demanding quality, time-to-market and test cost goals across all segments of the market,'' said Fred Cohen, general manager of the Mentor Graphics® Design-for-Test division. ``The enhancements we are delivering with the FastScan 2001 ATPG solution will simply enable our customers to deliver higher quality products at a lower cost.'' Handling Next-Generation Designs Additional enhancements available with FastScan 2001 include: Fault Sampling: Allows users to quickly sample a percentage of the entire fault list for a design in order to assess the coverage and/or testability issues of a circuit. Internal studies on customer designs of 1 million gates and above indicate that a 1 percent sample estimates coverage to within 1 percent of the final coverage for the entire design. K-shell Command Line Environment: Provides a K-shell command line environment that enables designers to easily recall previous commands for re-execution, allows for easy editing of command line arguments, and provides a command history mechanism. Pricing and Availability FastScan 2001 will be available for production shipment in October 2000. Mentor Graphics customers presently on a FastScan support program will receive an upgrade to FastScan 2001 at no additional cost. FastScan 2001 is available through Mentor Graphics starting at $92,400. The MacroTest option is available for an additional $50,000. For more information regarding FastScan 2001 and the complete portfolio of Mentor Graphics ATPG and BIST products, please visit the Mentor Graphics DFT web site at www.mentor.com/dft. About Mentor Graphics Mentor Graphics Corporation is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products and consulting services for the world's largest electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $500 million and employs approximately 2,600 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777, Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com. NOTE: Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. FastScan is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. Mentor Graphics can be found in booth # 809 at the International Test Conference CONTACT: Leanne White of Mentor Graphics Corporation, 503-685-1984, or leanne_white@mentor.com; or Jason Khoury of Benjamin Group/BSMG Worldwide, 415-352-2628, or jason@benjamingroup.com, for Mentor Graphics Corporation. SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corporation

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (355)	10/2/2000 9:24:32 AM
From: Ram Seetharaman	Respond to of 376

Monday October 2, 9:01 am Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corporation Mentor Graphics Announces BSDArchitect New Edition Boundary Scan Tool Supports Test of Complex SoCs INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE, ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Strengthening its lead in the area of system-on-chip (SoC) design and verification, Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT - news) today announced BSDArchitect(TM) New Edition, an updated version of its Design-for-Test (DFT) boundary scan synthesis tool. BSDArchitect New Edition saves weeks in the design, verification and test of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), integrated circuits (ICs) and SoCs. Replacing the current edition of Mentor's BSDArchitect tool, BSDArchitect New Edition was completely redesigned to meet the new challenges of testing complex ICs and provide full integration into complete DFT flows such as automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) and built-in self test (BIST). Driven by the increased complexity of printed circuit board (PCB) and packaging design technology, boundary scan has become the standard methodology for testing of complex PCBs. According to Prime Research Group(1), an estimated 42% of all designs will include boundary scan in the year 2000. Furthermore, with the migration to large SoC designs with internal and third-party IP, embedded memories and embedded software, boundary scan is now required to control complex test functions such as internal scan, BIST, and system debug. Reduced Time to Market BSDArchitect New Edition automatically generates an IEEE 1149.1 compliant test controller and boundary scan circuitry, allowing designers to dramatically reduce the amount of time and resources that would be required to manually implement the circuitry. By automatically generating the circuitry to the user's specification, design iterations can be updated in a matter of seconds. ``We have been using BSDArchitect New Edition for the past several months, and the tool has substantially decreased our chip integration time,'' said Joseph Vaccaro, DFT engineering manager for the DSP Standard Products division, Motorola Inc, based in Phoenix, AZ. ``In a dynamic system-on-chip design environment, design specifications and pinout configurations frequently change, and using BSDArchitect New Edition dramatically eased the pain of re-implementing the boundary scan.'' Completely Flexible Architecture BSDArchitect New Edition generates synthesizable RTL descriptions of the boundary scan circuitry, Boundary Scan Description Language (BSDL) files and verification testbench. The tool supports a fully flexible architecture, generating circuitry to support any combination of boundary scan, including private instructions. This allows support of any configuration of boundary scan, from the simplest implementations for board-level test to a full SoC test controller for internal test, manufacturing test and software debug. ``BSDArchitect New Edition has been proven to dramatically improve designer productivity for incorporating boundary scan circuitry into highly complex SoC designs,'' said Fred Cohen, general manager, Design-for-Test division, Mentor Graphics. ``With its flexible architecture, new capabilities and integration with both ATPG and BIST DFT flows, BSDArchitect New Edition is meeting these new design challenges, while providing both high product quality and reduced time-to-market.'' Enhanced Capabilities BSDArchitect New Edition also offers many new enhancements that provide designers with the most complete boundary scan logic tool in the industry. These include: -- Automatic synthesis of the design's IO pads to further reduce the ASIC implementation time. -- Support of complex IO pads such as open collector outputs and low-voltage differential inputs and outputs. -- Automatic generation of DC parametric tests. -- Direct control of memory BIST architectures, including Mentor's MBISTArchitect and Memory BIST-In-Place. Pricing and Availability BSDArchitect New Edition is available immediately. The tool is priced at $50,000 and is supported on Sun Solaris and Hewlett-Packard HP-UX operating systems. Existing customers of BSDArchitect can upgrade to BSDArchitect New Edition free of charge. For additional information regarding BSDArchitect or any of Mentor Graphics ATPG and BIST tools, please visit the Design-for-Test web site at www.mentor.com/dft. About Mentor Graphics Mentor Graphics Corporation is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products and consulting services for the world's largest electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $500 million and employs approximately 2,600 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777, Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com. NOTE: Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. BSDArchitect is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. Mentor Graphics can be found in booth # 809 at the International Test Conference (1) BIST User Study, Prime Research Group, June 15, 2000 CONTACT: Leanne White of Mentor Graphics Corporation, 503-685-1984, or leanne_white@mentor.com; or Jason Khoury of Benjamin Group/BSMG Worldwide, 415-352-2628, or jason@benjamingroup.com, for Mentor Graphics Corporation. SOURCE: Mentor Graphics Corporation

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (355)	10/2/2000 4:31:04 PM
From: Ram Seetharaman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 376

She likes MENT - you have got good taste LADY! Monday October 2 2:46 PM ET Mid-Cap Funds Pleased, Outlook Rosy By Cal Mankowski NEW YORK (Reuters) - A shift away from big growth stocks to medium-sized and even smaller companies may be at an early stage, say fund managers who have been on the right side of the sea change in the just-concluded third quarter. ``The trend is not over, it's really just getting started,'' said Richard Jandrain, senior managing director for equities with Banc One Investment Advisors. According to preliminary data for the third quarter released on Monday by fund trackers Lipper Inc., the average diversified stock mutual fund was up 2.65 percent. Of the diversified funds, mid-cap ``core'' funds were up 7.04 percent to lead other categories, while mid-cap value funds were up 6.74 percent and small-cap value funds were up 6.54 percent. Large-cap growth funds, the pacesetters in the latter half of the 1990's, were down 0.66 percent in the quarter while large-cap core funds had a decline of 0.37 percent. Large-cap value funds were up 3.34 percent, according to the Lipper data. While the Dow industrials were up nearly 2 percent in the third-quarter and the Russell 2000 had a gain of not quite 1 percent, the widely-used Standard & Poor's 500 benchmark was down just over 1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was down more than 7 percent. Jandrain said funds investing in technology stocks were clearly the leaders in 1998 and 1999. But high valuations relative to earnings, coupled with a few well-publicized disappointments, finally prompted investors to begin looking elsewhere. The trend had actually started early this year and became quite noticeable toward the end of the first quarter when the Nasdaq composite began a major retreat. Lately, some big companies have faltered after announcing that third-quarter earnings will be hit by the weak euro currency. ``The big risk is that a lot of these companies have significant revenues in Europe and the euro has lost over 20 percent of its value vs. the dollar,'' said Thyra Zerhusen, manager of the Alleghany Talon Fund which invests in mid-cap stocks. ``When foreign revenues are translated back to dollars it looks pretty weak,'' she said, adding she would not be surprised to see a few more earnings ``bombs'' in coming weeks. Jandrain said that many mid-cap stocks simply do not have the same international exposure that the bigger companies have. ''That's one of the problems you don't have to worry about if you're primarily domestic,'' he said. ``It definitely helps the mid-caps.'' Many funds got a boost from rebounding financial stocks in the quarter just ended, Jandrain said. Mergers and acquisitions drove brokerage and asset management stocks higher while improved industry fundamentals gave a boost to insurance stocks, he said. Zerhusen said specific stocks that have done well for her in the third quarter include McKesson HBOC Inc. (NYSE:MCK - news). a distributor of health care products, and Mentor Graphics Corp. (NasdaqNM:MENT - news), which provides hardware and software for the electronic design automation industry. Zerhusen said there were a couple of reasons why mid-caps could continue to outperform. She said forecasts for better growth rates, combined with more reasonable price-to-earnings valuations, favors mid-caps over large-caps. In addition, she thinks money will continue to rotate out of big caps and into mid-caps. ``The phenomenon can go on for quite some time,'' she said. The Lipper data also showed that active managers continue to have the upper hand over index managers. While 14 of the 15 categories of diversified stock funds all had gains for the quarter, funds specifically trying to match the S&P 500 were down 1.06 percent. Among stock funds focused on specific industry sectors, financial services funds were in the forefront with a gain of 21.11 percent while telecommunication funds remained in the doghouse with a decline of 7.26 percent. On a year-to-date basis, the diversified funds were up 6.46 percent wile sector funds of all types on average were up 15.92 percent.