July 18, 2006 -- Aprio Technologies, Inc. and Ponte Solutions, Inc. announced today their plan to interface Aprio's newly announced Halo-Quest and associated DFM View with Ponte's Yield Analyzer product. This interface will give mutual customers the ability to perform yield trade-offs that also consider lithography effects much earlier in the design flow. The evolving design flow will enable designs that are released to manufacturing with design correctable litho issues, either removed or considered, in addition to the current yield optimizations offered by Ponte. "Ponte is continuing to partner with DFM tool suppliers to provide designers with increasingly greater abilities to optimize for yield," said Alex Alexanian, President and CEO of Ponte Solutions. "The fact that Aprio's Halo-Quest and Ponte's Yield Analyzer have the same vision as of multiple accuracy levels, and Halo-Quest can also provide lithography simulations at design-cycle speeds, are some of the reasons Ponte elected to develop this joint solution with Aprio."

"Working with Ponte is a continuation of our efforts to provide lithography awareness to designers via Aprio's DFM View strategy," said Mike Gianfagna, President and CEO of Aprio Technologies. "By interfacing Ponte's Yield Analyzer to Halo-Quest, SOC designers can now make litho driven yield trade-offs without having to wait for an error report from their target manufacturing partner first."