Penstar Technology Licenses Tensilica's Diamond Standard 330HiFi Audio Processor Core for AVS Standard in China.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. & SHANGHAI, China -- Tensilica[R], Inc. today announced that Penstar Technology has licensed Tensilica's Diamond Standard 330HiFi Audio Processor core for use in a new SOC (System On Chip) design for cellular phones and personal media players (PMPs) conforming to China's emerging Audio Video coding Standard (AVS). Penstar intends to be the first Chinese company to offer a low power chip that is fully compliant with AVS, following the successful release of its DS-1000 IC product, which is an AVS video decoder IC supporting both standard and high definition video applications for digital TV and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV). Penstar will use the Diamond Standard 330HiFi Audio Processor for both the audio and control functions in the SOC.

"Tensilica's Diamond Standard 330HiFi can serve as both the audio processor and control processor, speeding and simplifying our new SOC design," stated Lenny Chen, director of engineering at Penstar. "We picked the Diamond Standard 330HiFi because it has been proven in multiple designs. We believe it will give us a head start so we can speed up our low power AVS SOC development and be ready to capture significant mobile AVS market share."

The AVS standard is being used as an alternative to MPEG-4/H.264 in China. It has been adopted by China as its national standard for next generation video compression application. It is also being considered as part of a global IPTV standard being drafted by the International Telecommunication Union. And it is being used in CMMB (China Multi Media Broadcasting), a recently released mobile TV specification.

"Penstar's engineers had a clear objective - get to market fast and lead in the deployment of AVS for this emerging standard," stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica's vice president of marketing. "Because our Diamond 330HiFi audio solution is both low power and fully programmable, new codecs like AVS can be deployed quickly, efficiently, and without risk since the core is robust, ready to use and fully proven."

About Penstar

Penstar is a leading fabless IC design company and technology innovator in China. The company is focused on designing, developing, manufacturing, and marketing of advanced SOC products, microcontrollers, HDTV and mobile TV decoder and demodulator ICs, LCD driver ICs, and related hardware, software products and service. For additional information, please visit www.penstartechnology.com.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors on the market today, in both an off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Tensilica's low-power, benchmark proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leaders in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. All Tensilica processor cores are complete with a matching software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models, and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.

Editors' Notes:

* Tensilica and Xtensa are registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

* Tensilica's announced licensees include Afa Technologies, ALPS, AMCC (JNI Corporation), Aquantia, Astute Networks, Atheros, ATI, Avago Technologies, Avision, Bay Microsystems, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Cypress, Crimson Microsystems, ETRI, EE Solutions, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems, iBiquity Digital, Ikanos Communications, LG Electronics, Lucid Information Technology, Marvell, MediaWorks, NEC Laboratories America, NEC Corporation, NetEffect, Neterion, Nethra Imaging, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), NuFront, NVIDIA, Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., Penstar, Plato Networks, PnpNetwork Technologies, sci-worx, Seiko Epson, Solid State Systems, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Stretch, TranSwitch Corporation, u-Nav Microelectronics, Victor Company of Japan (JVC), WiQuest Communications and XM Radio.