Blue Wave Systems Receives First C6701 Samples; Successful Integration Of TI's C6701 with Blue Wave Systems' PCI/C6600 Multi-Processor Board.

CARROLLTON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 19, 1998--Blue Wave Systems (NASDAQ/NMS:BWSI) has successfully integrated the new TMS320C6701 (C6701) floating-point DSP onto their PCI/C6600 dual processor PCI board.

With each C6701 providing up to 1GFLOP of processing power the DSP industry is primed to take an order of magnitude step-up in terms of raw floating-point processing power.

The processors have been fitted to a standard PCI/C6600 operating at 160Mhz. Over the coming weeks Blue Wave will conduct further studies into the processors' performance at a system level and offer customers a benchmarking service.

To date, Blue Wave has lead the industry with the fixed-point C6201. Texas Instruments has met their goal to ship C6701 silicon in Q4 98, at a time when Blue Wave is at the forefront of board-level design -- once again positioning Blue Wave to lead this technology from the front.

The C6701 provides up to a tenfold increase in performance over current floating-point DSPs, such as the TMS320C40 and ADSP2106x (SHARC). The processor is priced at a similar level to current technology which will result in a corresponding fall in the standard measure of $ / MFLOP. This is a major step forward for designers of high-end signal processing systems, allowing them to achieve greatly increased performance, at a lower cost and in a smaller space.

Blue Wave has been a key player in the C6000 arena since the original fixed-point device launch in February 1997. "With C6701 samples starting to ship we are once again proud to be at the leading edge of this exciting new technology," said Joe Andrulis, vice president of Marketing.

Blue Wave will be shipping boards to key customers and third parties early in Q4 98, with volume shipments of further C6701 products planned to start in January 1999.

Blue Wave Systems (NASDAQ/NMS:BWSI) is the world's leading supplier of board-level DSP solutions and provides digital signal processing (DSP) boards and subsystems to more than one-half of the world's top 40 industrial companies. Blue Wave Systems is principally involved in the development and sale of embedded DSP computers for a variety of industries. The company resulted from the merger of Mizar Inc. and Loughborough Sound Images Ltd. in April 1998.

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on expectations of the company but involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, technological change, quarterly fluctuations, integration of Mizar and Loughborough Sound Images, dependence on the defense industry, dependence on key suppliers and employees, competition, and Year 2000 compliance. The foregoing list should not be construed as exhaustive and the company disclaims any obligation subsequently to revise forward-looking statements to reflect unanticipated events. For a further explanation of risk factors please see the company's most recent SEC filings.