Lexra Announces the LX4380 Breaks Another Speed Limit for 32-bit Synthesizable CPU Core.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 1, 2001

New 266 MHz And 400 MHz Specifications Are Ideally Matched for

SDRAM and PCI Bus Based System-on-Chip (SOC) Designs

Lexra, a leading developer of SOC processor cores, today announced that its LX4380 32-bit RISC CPU is being re-released with a higher clock speed of 266-MHz for 0.18 um, and 400 MHz for 0.13 um. The core was announced in April with a clock speed of 250 MHz in 0.18 um and 360 MHz in 0.13 um. The new clock speeds enable 133 MHz based SOC designs to deliver more than 20% effective performance increase, due to more efficient interface between the CPU and system level peripherals such as DRAMs, DMA engines. The LX4380 is the only synthesizable 32-bit RISC core to be able to match the 133 MHz speed requirements in both of the popular semiconductor processes.

"Since the LX4380 was introduced, we continued to encounter customer requirements for a slightly higher, 133-MHz optimized peripheral clock speed," said Charlie Cheng, President and CEO of Lexra. "I am proud of our engineering effort to quickly meet this market demand."

Indeed, two factors push for the higher clock speed demand. First, 133-MHz has always been a popular clock speed in the PC world, first established by the PCI bus and later the AGP bus. As a result, many PC related peripherals such as SDRAM, graphics engines, etc. all run at multiple of this speed. But more importantly, most SOC designs targeting embedded systems are skipping 0.15 um. For those designs using 0.18 um, 266 MHz has become the requirement, while those using 0.13 um must aggressively go after 400 MHz to make up for possible higher chip cost and later time-to-market. Lexra's LX4380 is the only 32-bit synthesizable CPU able to reach these clock speeds.

The Faster LX4380

The LX4380 has always been designed for high clock speed. Its 7-stage pipeline alleviates cache memory cycle time bottleneck, while the system bus logic repartitioning reduces the amount of logic needing to run at the maximum CPU clock speed. To deliver against the new level of performance requirement, Lexra's engineering team has fine-tuned the LX4380's pipeline partitioning and floor planning.

While the design optimization improves the LX4380's clock speed only slightly, for example from 250 MHz to 266 MHz, the system level implication is significant for a 133 MHz based SOC design. The reason is that a 266 MHz CPU can access data synchronously from the 133 MHz bus at almost three times the rate of a 250 MHz CPU. Since all RISC processors must access data from external sources, even a modest 1% access rate due to cache misses can translate to more than 20% performance difference between these two CPUs. For most embedded systems, the cache miss rate is even bigger than 1%.

"Lexra's has extended its lead in both raw MHz as well as effective MIPS," said Charlie Hauck, Vice President of Engineering at Lexra. "We expect to continue to own the high performance, 32-bit MIPS processor space with LX4380 and its successors."

Pricing and Availability:

The 266-MHz LX4380 was shipped to its first customer in late August 2001. General availability will occur in Q4, 2001. Single project license fee for RTL is $568,000.

About Lexra:

Lexra, Inc. is a leading microprocessor developer specializing in 32-bit RISC, RISC-DSP and NPU cores for the embedded market. In less than four years, the company has established itself as an innovator in the embedded microprocessor technology and intellectual property (IP) licensing business model, with a proven track record for customer success. During this short period, Lexra has delivered seven different processor architectures (or designs) to over 30 licensees in six different countries. Its customers are among the top ten semiconductor companies as well as the top three network communication companies. Lexra is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. Further company information can be found at http://www.lexra.com.

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