Tensilica Signs Design Center Partnerships for Diamond Standard Processor Cores; E L & Associates to Also Produce Hard Cores for SMIC Foundry.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Tensilica(R), Inc. today announced that it has signed Diamond partnerships with four current design center partners, D-Clue Technologies, E L & Associates, Genesis Technology, Inc. (GTI), and Magellan Discovery Corporation. These four companies have been supporting Tensilica customers in the past, and will now support customers that want to use Tensilica's new Diamond Standard processor family. In addition, Tensilica announced that E L & Associates will develop the hardened versions of the Diamond Standard processor cores for the SMIC foundry.

These design centers cover the major ASIC design regions of the world:

--D-Clue Technologies, headquartered in Yokohama, Japan, provides design services, consulting, research and development, and educational services for major electronics companies in Japan. See www.d-clue.com.

--E L & Associates provides ASIC/COT (RTL to GDSII) design, design-for-test (DFT), and design-for-manufacturing (DFM) solutions from its headquarters in Pleasanton, California, and design center offices in Santa Clara, California, and Ottawa, Canada. See www.ela.com.

--GTI, headquartered in Hyogo, Japan, provides a unique combination of services for LSI design, assembly and testing, and can provide solutions in digital signal processing for speech, audio, video, and communications applications. See www.gti.co.jp.

--Magellan Discovery Corporation, headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, provides a complete package of value-added services to help overcome tough design-in challenges and deliver products on time to customers in the fast-paced Asian market. See www.magellandiscovery.com.

"We are delighted to have our design center partners ready to service customers with Diamond Standard processors," stated Chris Rowen, president and CEO, Tensilica. "These companies have proven that they have a deep understanding of our processor architecture and customer requirements. Now, with support for Diamond Standard processors, they can bring Tensilica technology to even more ASIC customers."

E L & Associates to Harden Diamond Cores for SMIC

In a separate announcement today, Tensilica announced hardened versions of the Diamond Standard processor family will be available for the SMIC foundry. E L & Associates and Tensilica will work together to develop the Diamond hard core packages. The hardened cores will enable systems and semiconductor companies to use SMIC's cost-effective foundry process with minimum integration cost, time and risk. A hardened core is a complete physical design of a processor core, already thoroughly tested and ready to be quickly dropped into an ASIC design. Designers do not have to go through the synthesis and place-and-route process required of a soft core.

About Tensilica

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the growing need for optimized, application-specific microprocessor and DSP solutions in high-volume embedded applications. Using a patented configurable and extensible processor generation technology, Tensilica is the only company that offers a wide range of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors in both off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard series cores, and with full designer-configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Every Tensilica processor core comes complete with a companion 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 ALPS, AMCC (JNI Corporation), Astute Networks, Atheros, ATI, Avago Technologies, Avision, Bay Microsystems, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Cypress, Crimson Microsystems, ETRI, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems, Ikanos Communications, LG Electronics, Marvell, NEC Laboratories America, NEC Corporation, NetEffect, Neterion, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), NVIDIA, Olympus Corporation, sci-worx, Seiko Epson, Solid State Systems, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Stretch, TranSwitch Corporation, u-Nav Microelectronics and Victor Company of Japan (JVC).