QuickLogic Pioneers Embedded Standard Products, ESPs; Transforming the Promise of IP Into Reality.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 1998--QuickLogic Corp. today announced a revolutionary new class of devices, called Embedded Standard Products (ESPs), which enable extremely fast development of complex systems.

ESPs are devices that consist of pre-determined functions customized and supported by user-configurable logic (FPGAs) on the same piece of silicon. With the introduction of ESPs, QuickLogic is addressing the design community's rapidly increasing demand for a solution that bridges the gap between existing ASIC options and the long-sought goal of system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs.

Tom Hart, president and CEO of QuickLogic declared, "ESP-based design solves a significant industry problem. System complexity continues to increase, but there has been no corresponding increase in the capability of design solutions to manage that complexity."

"Soft IP, the only real option until now, has been one attempt by the industry to provide 'standard products' for systems on silicon," continued Hart. "However, the soft IP model has not lived up to its claimed potential. First, there are significant design challenges of internal timing, size, silicon cost, routability and pin-out stability when mapping complex soft IP onto a particular silicon platform. Second, soft IP generally cannot address the specialized physical interface (I/O) requirements of many applications. Finally, when these technical obstacles are combined with the complex business issues of licensing fees, royalty payments and technical support, implementing soft IP often becomes an impossible task."

"With our ESP strategy, we are addressing the design implementation challenge by delivering solutions that are an integral part of the silicon and thus can much more easily be designed into a system." explained Hart. "ESPs provide engineers with the ease of use, guaranteed functionality, and high performance of standard products combined with the configurability and flexibility of programmable logic. From a business standpoint, these devices are as easy to buy and use as any other standard product component. Thus ESPs solve both the technical and business problems engendered by soft IP."

In its most simple form, an ESP includes three basic parts: a programmable logic array, a standard function, and an interface that allows customization of the standard function as well as communication between the standard and programmable sections. The interface is a critical component since it must provide a large amount of high performance interconnect resources for an ESP to be an effective system solution.

Chuck Tralka, director of product marketing at QuickLogic noted, "QuickLogic is the only company currently positioned to offer practical ESPs because our patented ViaLink antifuse technology enables us to build the quality of interface necessary to interconnect complex functionality and user-configurable logic. ViaLink antifuses are extremely small and are placed in the metal layers of a device, allowing fully populated interconnect for ESP devices without increasing device costs. Its low resistance supports the high performance requirements of embedded functions. Because the technology is non-volatile, it can also support large amounts of on-chip configuration data, permitting rapid device configuration without the need for an external PROM."

QuickLogic's first ESP product offering is a high performance embedded RAM family which will be formally announced later in Q3. This family will be followed by a series of products supporting bus, memory and microprocessor control, interface and peripheral functions. The first of these devices will be available in Q4 of this year.

QuickLogic Information:

QuickLogic, the Embedded Standard Products (ESP) company, delivers the technology that bridges the gap from traditional ASICs to the SOC Solutions the industry is demanding. QuickLogic's proprietary ViaLink programmable metal-to-metal antifuse technology, which provides a wealth of routing resources, is the foundation of its ESPs and pASIC families of FPGA devices (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). QuickLogic Corp. is a three-time winner in the national "Technology Fast 500" program, being named one of the country's fastest growing technology companies. The company is located at 1277 Orleans Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1138. Phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]. The toll-free literature line is 800/842-FPGA. Email at: [e-mail], or visit QuickLogic's website at http://www.quicklogic.com.

Note to Editors: ViaLink and pASIC and the QuickLogic logo are registered trademarks. All other brands or trademarks are the property of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

    CONTACT: QuickLogic Corp., Sunnyvale
              Jan Houts, 408/990-4256
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              Eileen Elam, 650/917-1488
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