Agilent Technologies Ships 100 Millionth System Chip.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 24, 2001

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today announced a milestone in its system-on-chip (SOC) business with the shipping of its 100 millionth system chip.

Agilent launched its SOC business in 1993 and is an industry leader in the development of highly integrated chips used in high-volume consumer applications such as desktop printers. SOCs typically feature an embedded microprocessor or digital signal processor (DSP), memory, system bus, and a variety of peripherals all integrated onto a single chip.

SOC technology is becoming increasingly important to achieve the necessary performance in products such as mobile phones and portable computing devices where size and power consumption are critical. SOCs provide consumer electronics manufacturers many benefits including a reduction in component count, shorter design time, decreased costs and higher performance.

"Designing highly integrated SOCs for products such as HP printers has propelled our design teams to a leadership position in the industry, delivering premium performance and fast time-to-market, while continuing to lower system costs," said Kathy Tobin, business unit manager for Agilent. "With the addition of several industry standard intellectual property cores, including the ARM and MIPS processors, we are now well-positioned to design SOCs for high-volume mobile information appliance applications."

Highly regarded among the SOC design and semiconductor intellectual property (IP) community, Agilent is known for integrating complex design blocks onto multi-million transistor system chips that run at the industry's highest speeds. The company has an outstanding track record of first-pass success in the design and manufacture of these chips. Agilent was the first to integrate the Intel i960, Motorola 68K and Zilog Z80 microprocessors into SOCs targeted at consumer and commercial applications.

With over three decades of design and manufacturing experience, Agilent offers state-of-the-art hierarchical design methodology and excellent design-for-test capability that provides unsurpassed, yet economical, test coverage. These strengths, combined with an extensive IP portfolio, facilitate rapid integration of quality, high-performance ASICs and SOCs for applications including communications, imaging, and computing.

Agilent recently announced a series of application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design wins at Cisco Systems. The ASICs will be incorporated into Cisco's line of Catalyst network switches.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and healthcare. With 48,000 employees serving customers in more than 120 countries, Agilent had net revenue of $10.8 billion in fiscal year 2000. Information about Agilent can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com.