The tools will allow two-way design flows between the BoardStation from Mentor Graphics Corp. and Cadence Design Systems Inc.'s Allegro product.
Translators can have a tendency to lose data in the transition from one design tool to another.
The goal of the interchange is to provide not just relevant parts but 100 percent data interoperability between tools on the hub, Heimlich said. Previous offerings include interoperability tools for a variety of high-frequency and RF design and layout tools, such as Agilent's Advanced Design Systems, Mentor Graphics' Design Architect and Ansoft Corp.'s High Frequency Structure Simulator. Among these tools, Mentor's BoardStation has 20.4 percent of the worldwide market and Cadence's Allegro family has 16 percent, according to 1999 figures from Gartner Dataquest. SmartLynx products use three proprietary core technologies to accomplish the task of intelligent integration. IExchange, the messaging layer that connects tools to VDA, is simply the conduit between the source tool to be migrated and the target tool.