Crimson Microsystems Picks Tharas' Hammer Hardware Accelerator; Hammer Delivers Double Digit Throughput in Record Time.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Tharas Systems, Inc., a provider of high-performance, hardware-assisted design verification solutions, announced today that Crimson Microsystems, an early stage start-up with revolutionary new communications silicon technology, has deployed multiple Hammer hardware accelerators to assist in verification of its next-generation communications IC for the optical transport switching and access markets.

"Crimson is developing a new class of silicon systems called Microcommunications Processors," said Paul Mahi, CEO of Crimson Microsystems. "Our products require long and extensive verification cycles including a transaction-based test environment for SONET application. After evaluating competing solutions, we selected Hammer. Hammer delivered a double-digit performance gain over our software simulations and plugged right into our existing debug environment. We were especially pleased by the fact that we were able to deploy Hammer to accelerate our test suites in less than two days of installation."

"Robust hardware acceleration is a must to meet today's demanding project schedules. Ease of adoption is equally important. Hammer not only delivers the best price/performance in the industry but has demonstrated the best time-to-performance at Crimson," said Rahm Shastry, President and CEO of Tharas Systems. "We are pleased that Crimson picked the Hammer 100 over competing solutions."

About Tharas Systems

Founded in 1998, Tharas Systems is privately held with corporate headquarters located at 2518 Mission College Blvd., Suite 101, Santa Clara, CA 95054. Its high-performance verification technology leads to significant shortening of the verification cycle and material reduction in time-to-market for designers of complex integrated circuits and electronic systems. Tharas Systems Hammer custom-processor based hardware-assisted verification solution works in conjunction with popular Verilog and VHDL-based software simulators from Synopsys (NASDAQ: SNPS), Cadence Design (NYSE: CDN) and Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT). Visit Tharas Systems at http://www.tharas.com/. For more specific product information, email [e-mail] or call 1-408-855-3200.

Hammer(R) is a trademark of Tharas Systems Inc. Tharas acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.