Solido Receives $6.5M Second Round Financing

Golden Opportunities Fund led a syndicate of investors includingBDC Venture Capital, Victoria Park Capital, and private investors.Ulrich Felbermayr, Senior Investment Manager with Golden OpportunitiesFund, was welcomed as a member of the Board of Directors. GoldenOpportunities made their initial investment along with participationfrom all existing investors, including Investment Saskatchewan,through its investment advisor, Victoria Park Capital, and BDC VentureCapital.

Amit Gupta, Solido cofounder and CEO, said that the Solidotechnology fills a long-term gap in automated design tools for analogand custom IC designers, and ensures that nanometer designs workdespite wide variations within a given manufacturing process. "Oursolution complements traditional Monte Carlo analysis, which is theonly analysis that's been available to analog and custom IC designersfor years," said Mr. Gupta.

According to Mary Olsson, vice president at GarySmith EDA (SantaClara, Calif.), Monte Carlo analysis is inadequate for analog andmixed-signal designers who are designing products in applicationsbuilt around systems on a chip (SoCs). "Analog and custom IC designersare seeing the effects of sub-90-nm process variations that areaffecting yield loss, poor performance, greater power consumption, andlarger die area. Designs are failing, which is complicating thedetection of transistor failures."

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, analogproducts - the market Solido serves - was one of the fastest-growingsegments in 2006, growing 17.3% to $37.4 billion; forecasts projectgrowth to $48.6 billion by 2009, a compounded annual growth rate(CAGR) of 11.1%. Growth is driven by strong demand from wirelesscommunications, industrial and medical equipment applications.

More About Solido's Technology

The new Solido patent-pending technology incorporates statisticalsampling, tradeoff analysis, circuit characterization, and circuitenhancement to discover problems and explore opportunities tocompensate for those problems. Included in the Solido solution are newstatistical data mining and visualization algorithms that enabledesigners to identify areas of interest, efficiently explore the data,analyze and interpret it, and prepare reports.

Solido is integrating its technology into all industry-standardanalog, mixed-signal, and custom design flows. Solido is currentlyworking with customer partners and will announce its transistor-levelstatistical design and verification tool suite in the next few months.

About Solido Design Automation

Solido Design Automation Inc. provides transistor-levelstatistical design and verification software solutions foranalog/mixed-signal, custom digital, and memory integrated circuits.Founded by serial analog entrepreneurs, the privately held company isheadquartered in Saskatoon, Canada with sales offices in U.S.A., Japanand Europe. For further information, visit orcall 306-382-4100.

About Golden Opportunities Fund

Golden Opportunities Fund is Saskatchewan's first and largestProvincial Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Fund with more than $100million of assets under management. The Fund has invested inSaskatchewan growth companies across 10 different industry sectors,making a significant and positive impact on the future ofSaskatchewan. For further information, visit.

About Victoria Park Capital

Victoria Park Capital, with over $640 million under management, isthe largest private equity firm in Saskatchewan with a mandate toinvest in and help build value in businesses which bring economicactivity to the province and who require total financing greater than$3 million. For further information, visit.

About BDC Venture Capital

BDC Venture Capital is a major venture capital investor in Canada,active at every stage of the company's development cycle, from seedthrough expansion, with a focus on technology-based businesses thathave high growth potential and are positioned to become dominantplayers in their markets. BDC Venture Capital has been involved inventure capital since 1975, and has to date invested in more than 400different companies. It currently manages approximately $550 millionin venture capital assets invested in the areas of Life Sciences,Telecommunications, Information Technology, Advanced Technologies andFund Investments. For more information, see .