BOPS Appoints Former ARM Exec, Carl Schlachte, as CEO; Company Positions Itself for Further Growth With Its Experienced Execs.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 1, 2000

BOPS, Inc., a leading programmable DSP core provider, today announced that the company has named Carl Schlachte (pronounced Shlack-Tee) as its CEO. Schlachte joins the company from ARM Ltd., where he was most recently Vice President of North American Sales.

According to Mark Bowles, BOPS President, "Carl's experience and intimate knowledge of the customers, markets, and business model of semiconductor Intellectual Property makes him the ideal candidate to lead BOPS into the next phase of broad commercialization. Carl and I have worked effectively together in the past and it is very exciting to be on the same team again."

Arnab Chanda, Semiconductor Analyst for Robertson Stephens, a lead investment banking firm in semiconductors, states, "DSP is one of the great remaining opportunities in the semiconductor IP space and BOPS is well positioned to become the leader. Carl Schlachte's coming to BOPS is evidence of the enormous opportunity that exists. If Carl can recreate at BOPS what he helped create at ARM, BOPS should be very exciting to watch."

John Marren, Managing Director, of Morgan Stanley, was also quoted as saying; "Carl adds the experience that BOPS needs to take it to its next level of growth as the DSP market explodes. His tenure at ARM and experience there are invaluable as BOPS moves forward and takes its place in the DSP market."

As well as Schlachte and Bowles, BOPS management team includes: David Baker, VP of Product Development; Paul Duncan, VP of Operations; Bruce Schulman, VP of Business Development; Jerry Pechanek, Chief Architect and founder; and Nikos Pitsianis, Director of Compilers. Rick Kepple, formerly VP Marketing at QED, joined BOPS last year (October 1999) as VP of Sales and Marketing.

Carl Schlachte is a 15-year semiconductor veteran who has held numerous executive, sales and engineering positions at both ARM and Motorola. He comes to BOPS after 3-1/2 years at ARM, Ltd., where he was VP Sales for North America. He was among ARM's first employees in the U.S. and was responsible for establishing ARM's sales presence in North America, eventually accounting for more than half of the company's revenues and half of ARM's semiconductor partners. Prior to helping establish ARM as a de facto standard, Schlachte was in Motorola's World Marketing group where he was a key member of the PowerPC team. He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Clemson University (South Carolina).

About BOPS, Inc.

BOPS, Inc. is a Palo Alto, California based company that develops and licenses the highest-performance, scalable and reusable DSP cores and world-class compiler and software tool products targeted for high-volume, SOC-based applications for the Internet, multimedia and wireless communications markets.

The ManArray DSP core product family accelerates a SOC manufacturers' time from product concept to high-volume shipment. The ManArray technology has been designed to integrate with MIPS(R) and ARM(tm) processor-based SOCs.

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BOPS is a registered trademark of BOPS, Inc. and ManArray is a trademark of BOPS, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.