Synopsys, Inc
  700 East Middlefield Road
  Mountain View, CA 94043-4033
  650-962-5000

  15 December 2001


  Letter of Recommendation for Kayvan Sylvan:

  It has been my pleasure to work with Kayvan Sylvan for about 15
  months.  I have found Kayvan to be exceptionally knowledgeable in
  the areas of ClearCase Administration and Unix Systems
  Administration.  Kayvan is very solution oriented, once he has
  taken grasp of an issue he has consistently driven it to
  resolution, even when that means working outside of his traditional
  areas of responsibility.  Kayvan has diverse interests, and is
  quick to learn systems outside of his previous experience.

  Kayvan has supported me and the rest of the Physical Synthesis R&D
  team as the technical-deep ClearCase expert for Synopsys' I/S
  organization.  Over that time I have found him to be a wellspring
  of knowledge.

  Our initial contact was on my project to introduce Linux servers to
  the Synopsys Development Environment.  After several months of
  attempting to bring ClearCase up on a multi-processor SMP Linux
  system we turned to Kayvan for assistance.  Kayvan resolved the
  kernel issues and had us up and running in a few weeks.
  Subsequently, Kayvan helped us correctly configure LSF on the Linux
  cluster.  Kayvan was instrumental to the success of the project.

  Later, when we encountered intermittent floating point failures on
  Linux, Kayvan was again a key contributor.  He located the correct
  patch, reconfigured it to work with ClearCase, and distributed it
  to the 60 machines in our cluster.

  Kayvan has more than proven that I can completely trust his
  judgement.  I find I frequently rely on his advice when making
  technical decisions.  I will deeply miss his contribution to the
  team.

  I highly recommend Kayvan Sylvan as an asset to your technical
  staff.  If you wish to further discuss Kayvan's qualifications and
  his suitability as a member of your team, please feel free to
  contact to me at Synopsys.


			    Sincerely,


			    Robert J Verbrugghe
			    Principal Engineer
			    Synopsys, Inc
			    verb-at-synopsys.com
			    650-584-4314