Solution-Soft Upgrades gdzip, Adds Support for Floating Licenses

Latest release of compression utility for GDSII files enhances productivity by allowing software licenses to be shared among many users.

Santa Clara, Calif., April 10, 2005 – Solution-Soft Systems, Inc., a leading provider of Intelligent Data Optimization (IDO) solutions, today announced an enhancement to gdzip^TM, a specialized file compressor for the GDSII file format. This latest upgrade provides customers with the ability to optimally leverage their compressor licenses across their company by allowing them to run the Solution-Soft tool on various machines as needed. With this release customers have the choice of either running the software with Solution-Soft’s internally developed floating license server or leveraging their existing Macrovision FLEXnet^TM license server.

“Solution-Soft has always provided our customers with the best software, support and options. This latest upgrade to gdzip stands as an example of our flexibility and willingness to go the extra distance to provide options for our customers.” said Paul Wang, CTO at Solution-Soft. “With this new release our customers can simplify the administration of their software licenses, increase productivity and maximize the value are software provides them.”

FLEXnet
As the world's only software licensing platform and the de facto industry standard, FLEXnet™ provides the broadest possible range of license management capabilities for software publishers and enterprise customers. Already embedded in millions of copies of software, FLEXnet’s versatile architecture encompasses products and services from a growing list of Macrovision partners, offering more flexible solutions than any one provider—or in-house IT staff—can possibly deliver, without sacrificing the convenience of one-stop shopping.

gdzip
As a chip design progresses it passes through many hands and across a multitude of systems on its way to final production. Initially it may begin at the workstation of an engineer in a fabless design house then be sent to, or accessed by, other engineers internally as they complete the final design. When the software-based design has successfully passed significant internal processes the chip design house will send the files for the design to a mask shop or chip foundry to begin the process of making the physical semiconductor chip. In the industry this process is called “Tape-Out”, a legacy term carried over from the days when the files had to be written to magnetic tape and physically sent via courier to the mask shop or foundry. Today, practically every semiconductor company uses the Internet to accomplish this task to help meet their time-to-market demands.

In between all these steps, gdzip reduces the time delay of getting the files where they need to be. The tremendous size of GDSII files alone can cause problems when transferring to another site. Users can experience long-delays as well as line failures during the transfer. Reducing the size of the files with gdzip frees the tape-out engineer from the tedious task of monitoring the transfer for an excessively long time as well as limiting the possibility of connection failures with the shortened transfer cycle. Long term, gdzip provides a significant savings in storage by diminishing the size of each version of every design that companies will archive.

About Solution-Soft

Solution-Soft is the leading provider of Intelligent Data Optimization (IDO) solutions, which address the urgent need for automated management of data in complex networking environments. IDO solutions facilitate automated data selection, movement and redirection that optimize high availability, storage scalability and system performance. The company has developed robust data and information life-cycle management software solutions for corporate data centers and storage system vendors. Solution-Soft boasts more than 1,500 customers, including 3M, AT&T, Boeing, Ford, French Telecom, Hewlett Packard, Merck, TSMC and UMC. Solution-Soft’s market presence is bolstered by partnerships with Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS), FalconStor. (NASDAQ :FALC), Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Netapp (NASDAQ: NTAP), Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT) and Sun Microsystems NASDAQ:SUNW).

Founded in 1993, Solution-Soft is privately held and based in Santa Clara, Calif.
For more information, visit www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1415.

Contact: Michael Morrison

Solution-Soft

408.346.1415

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