Antonio J. Viana Joins Tensilica as Sr. VP of Worldwide Sales; Ex-ARM VP Recognizes Performance Impact and Power Savings of Tensilica's Automated Processor Generator.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Tensilica(R), Inc., the only company to automate the design of optimized application-specific configurable processors for system-on-chip (SOC) design, today announced that Antonio J. Viana has joined the company as senior vice president of worldwide sales. Viana joined Tensilica from ARM, Ltd., where he was vice president of North American sales.

"Tensilica has intelligently automated the customization of processors to achieve RTL-equivalent performance and much lower power dissipation," stated Viana. "Considering all of the challenges of SOC design, time-to-market is typically one of the most significant. Tensilica's technology is best poised to help customers meet the current and future challenges of SOC design, in particular, time-to-market. I am very excited to be a part of the Tensilica family."

"Under Antonio's leadership, ARM's North American revenues reached record levels. Combined with his past experience of leading the ARM global foundry program group, he brings a strong and comprehensive insight into the worldwide semiconductor industry," stated Chris Rowen, Tensilica's president and CEO. "Antonio will drive the expansion of our customer focus as we proliferate and popularize this fundamental new wave of configurable processors and processor-based design."

Viana worked for ARM since 1998 and held a number of positions during his tenure there, including business unit manager of development systems, director of the ARM foundry program, regional sales director and, for the past three years, vice president of North American sales. Prior to ARM, he was director of sales for Encore Industries and worked for SGI and Hughes Aircraft. He holds a B.S. in industrial and systems engineering from Cal Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Viana's appointment completes the expansion of Tensilica's customer-facing executive team, which also includes Dan Weed, who joined the company earlier this year as senior vice president of customer engineering, and Steve Roddy, vice president of marketing, who joined Tensilica in 2000. Bernie Rosenthal, former senior vice president of marketing and sales, left Tensilica earlier this year to become president and CEO of Reaction Design in San Diego, CA.

About Tensilica

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the growing need for optimized, application-specific microprocessor solutions in high-volume embedded applications. With a configurable and extensible microprocessor core called Xtensa, Tensilica is the only company that has automated and patented the time-consuming process of generating a customized microprocessor core along with a complete software development tool environment, producing new configurations in a matter of hours. For more information, visit www.tensilica.com.

Editors' Notes:

--Tensilica and Xtensa are registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

--Tensilica's announced licensees include Agilent, ALPS, AMCC (JNI Corporation), Astute Networks, ATI, Avision, Bay Microsystems, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Cypress, Crimson Microsystems, ETRI, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems, Ikanos Communications, LG Electronics, Marvell, NEC Laboratories America, NEC Corporation, NetEffect, Neterion, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), NVIDIA, Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., sci-worx, Seiko Epson, Solid State Systems, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Stretch, TranSwitch Corporation, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC).

--Photos of Antonio J. Viana are available. Please contact Paula Jones ([e-mail]) or Erika Powelson ([e-mail]) for a copy.