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TWST: Can we start with a quick introduction and historical sketch of TransEDA (London: TRA.L)?

Mr. Muerle: TransEDA focuses on functional verification of electronic systems, which are basically implemented in IC’s or ASIC’s. For example, if you look inside a mobile phone today it basically contains one major chip which incorporates all the functionality of the mobile phone. This is the same for a computer, for networking appliances, etc. They all have some key electronic device which holds the majority of the functionality. As far as what we are doing, we want to give people a technology which helps customers to sufficiently verify that the functionality they have designed is actually correct according to certain specifications. With our current technology, we are able to tell them whether they have done enough testing, whether they should do more testing, where they should concentrate their testing, and so on. So we give them objectively measurable information about the quality of their functional testing.

TWST: Can you tell us about your product family, the underlying technology and what you bring to your customers?

Mr. Muerle: We currently have a product family called Verification Navigator, which is a frame work that incorporates three major tools -- VN-Cover, VN-Check and VN-Optimize. VN-Cover is a design coverage tool which takes your implementation of this chip and correlates how well your test is exercising your implementation. We tell you where you have done sufficient testing, where you did not do enough testing, and therefore point you in the right direction. VN-Check is an HDL (High Level Design Language) checking tool, and we basically refer to VHDL and Verilog, which are the two main HDLs. VN-Check analyzes your description of the design if it is written in VHDL or Verilog and informs you of obvious violation of good design style, design rules, syntax problems and cleans the design file before you go into later processing like simulation and synthesis. Therefore, by using VN-Check your design file which you’re taking forward is basically cleaned up in according to certain guidelines and syntax. The third technology we offer is a tool called VN-Optimize. VN-Optimize takes various tests which you have generated using VN-Cover and frauds them by test productivity. So you get a list of your single tests and you know which tests is the most effective in terms of test coverage and this helps you to structure the test and also speed up verification. The fourth product line under Verification Navigator that we have available today is a system verification solution where we have a control bench using bus functional models and we basically provide a complete system test reference. So you can take your design which you have done in HDL, for example, and you virtually put it into this test environment where you can stress it, you can throw random tests at it, director tests, you can structure the test architecture. So we are providing test environments for large processors, the most popular processors, plus processor buses like PCIX Press, Hyper Transport, for example. This is what I would call the existing technology. There is one derivative we offer for VN-Cover. VN-Cover typically runs on a software simulator and this is relatively slow for the large systems we test. Now we have portered this solution to run on emulators and we are the sole provider in the world of this technology, i.e. are the only ones that allow this whole design coverage software to run on an emulator. An emulator is the same as a simulator but it runs in hardware and is a thousand times faster. So again it’s a significant productivity increase.

TWST: If you have a chance to sit down with investors, what are the three or four key points you would give for them to take a further look at TransEDA?

Mr. Muerle: You know, we went through some difficult times, but we have successfully reorganized the company and we have set it toward future growth. Currently our stock price is at around 2.5 pence which is very low compared to the potential we have and I think this would be a good opportunity for a reasonable return of investment.