Cypress Samples Industry's Highest-Density Burst SRAM; 72-Mbit NoBL Products Offer Greater Density and Lower Power For Switches and Routers at OC-48 Speeds and Above.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 2002

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:CY) today announced sampling of the 72-Mbit NoBL(R) (No Bus Latency(TM)) burst family of SRAMs optimized for networking applications operating at OC-48 speeds (2.5 Gigabits per second) and above. The new devices are co-developed between Cypress and Enhanced Memory Systems, Inc., a Ramtron subsidiary, using a patented one-transistor (1T) Enhanced SRAM (ESRAM) technology to achieve the same speed, 4-8 times higher density and four times lower power than traditional six-transistor sync SRAMs.

NoBL SRAMs have an architecture optimized for the most demanding high-speed applications requiring maximum bus bandwidth. They eliminate the latency (dead cycles, or wait states) found in conventional synchronous burst SRAM architectures when transitioning between write and read operations. The NoBL architecture allows data transfer on every clock cycle, regardless of whether a write or read operation is taking place, thereby providing 100% bus utilization.

"The sampling of the 72-Mbit NoBL Sync SRAM product further demonstrates our leadership in high performance memory," said Christos Mimikopoulos, senior marketing manager for Cypress's Memory Products Division. "The new 72-Mbit NoBL burst offers high throughput for networking operations, making it an ideal packet buffer. The 1T architecture enables us to offer a larger and faster memory at a lower price per bit than standard sync SRAMs."

The 72-Mbit NoBL burst SRAM products are organized in 2 Mb x 36, operate at up to 166 MHz clock speed and deliver 100 percent bus utilization during four-word read/write/read transactions. The products are available with 2.5 V or 3.3 V power supply options in a 100-pin TQFP package. In addition, these products are pin, function and timing compatible with the Cypress family of NoBL SRAMs in the burst operation, making them ideal upgrades in network systems that require larger SRAM buffer memories.

Availability

Samples of the 72-Mbit NoBL SRAM will be available in early October with production quantities in late Q4'02. Cypress Semiconductor and Enhanced Memory Systems will offer the 72-Mbit NoBL SRAM as a second source to one another.

Product Photo

A high-resolution photo of Cypress's 72 Mb NoBL product can be downloaded from: http://www.cypress.com/pub/72mnobl.jpg.

About Cypress

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:CY) is Connecting from Last Mile to First Mile(TM) with high-performance solutions for personal, network access, enterprise, metro switch, and core communications-system applications. Cypress Connects(TM) using wireless, wireline, digital, and optical transmission standards, including Bluetooth, USB, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, Gigabit Ethernet, and DWDM. Leveraging its process and system-level expertise, Cypress makes industry-leading physical layer devices, framers, and network search engines, along with a broad portfolio of high-bandwidth memories, timing technology solutions, and programmable microcontrollers. More information about Cypress is accessible online at www.cypress.com.

About Ramtron/Enhanced Memory Systems

Ramtron is the world leader in ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) products -- new high-performance nonvolatile memories that merge the benefits of many mainstream memory technologies into a single device. The company also develops and markets ultra-high performance memory products through its subsidiary; Enhanced Memory Systems, Inc.

For more information about Enhanced Memory Systems Inc. and its products, contact: Communications Department, Enhanced Memory Systems Inc., 1850 Ramtron Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, 80921. Telephone is 800/545-3726; FAX is 719/481-9294; E-mail address is [e-mail]. Homepage is http://www.edram.com

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements herein that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" involving risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to: the effect of global economic conditions, shifts in supply and demand, market acceptance, the impact of competitive products and pricing, product development, commercialization and technological difficulties, and capacity and supply constraints. Please refer to Cypress's Securities and Exchange Commission filings for a discussion of such risks.

Cypress, the Cypress logo and NoBL are registered trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. "Connectivity from Last Mile to First Mile," No Bus Latency and "Cypress Connects" are trademarks of Cypress. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.