SAN FRANCISCO — The ASIC Council's Open Library API (OLA) solution received two expected and one unexpected endorsement at a demonstration of OLA held at the 35th Design Automation Conference this week.

As expected, EDA vendors Mentor Graphics Corp. and Ambit Design Systems Inc. threw their support behind OLA, which promises to allow ASIC vendors to port libraries into a common format that would be read by all OLA-compliant tools. But in a surprise endorsement, EDA market share leader, Cadence Design Systems Inc. announced plans to openly license APIs for its LEF and DEF physical formats.

The move seemingly opens the door for greater furtherance of OLA as an interoperability standard, and challenges Synopsys — which has been feuding with the ASIC Council in favor of its ".lib" library format — to throw its support behind OLA and the ASIC Council's ALF format.

"The EDA community needs to stop using formats as competitive barriers and start using them to deliver complete, productive design flows," said K.C. Murphy, executive vice president of the strategic business unit of Cadence (San Jose, Calif.).

Aart de Geus, chief executive officer of Synopsys (Mountain View, Calif.) said he is encouraged by the news from Cadence, but that Synopsys is currently waiting to see how OLA unfolds.

Synopsys officials said that the company is currently committed to supporting .lib and DCL, but is waiting to see if OLA becomes a "'real' solution"--"real" meaning you can design with it.

If OLA proves to be a real solution, de Geus said that Synopsys will likely back the effort. In the meantime, de Geus said Synopsys expects to announce news on the standards front in the coming months.

Cadence said it will offer full and equal access to LEF and DEF in 1999 through its Cadence Connection third-party software program and will reveal details of the program in the fourth quarter of this year.