eASIC Strengthens Technical Ranks By Attracting Industry Luminary

Dr. Schmit, previously Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and most recently Chief Hardware Architect at Tabula Joins eASIC’s Management Team

Santa Clara, California, December 20, 2006 - eASIC Corporation, a provider of Structured ASIC devices and Configurable Logic IP, today announced that Dr. Herman Schmit, previously Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), has joined eASIC in a newly created role as Technology Architect. Reporting to Ronnie Vasishta, eASIC’s CEO, Dr. Schmit will contribute to the development of future architecture for eASIC’s innovative Structured ASIC products. Following the high demand for the currently offered 90nm Nextreme family, Dr. Schmit will focus on architecting breakthrough technology and products aimed at providing the customers with a lower-cost and lower-power alternative to existing Field Programmable Gate Array solutions.

Prior to joining eASIC, Dr. Schmit was the Chief Hardware Architect at Tabula Inc, (Santa Clara), a stealth-mode chip start-up. Dr. Schmit received his B.S.E. in Computer Science Engineering from University of Pennsylvania in 1987, and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. Prior to Tabula, Dr. Schmit was Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published more than 40 technical articles in leading journals and conference proceedings, was the general chair of the International Symposium on FPGAs in 2005, and has been awarded 6 patents in the areas of Integrated Circuits and Programmable Gate Arrays. He was a coauthor on the first academic papers on the Structured ASIC concept.

“With the addition of Dr. Herman Schmit to our management team, we strengthen our capability to execute on our disruptive technology strategy, drawing upon his insight into advanced semiconductor design architectures,” said Ronnie Vasishta, eASIC’s CEO. “Dr. Schmit brings to eASIC a thorough knowledge of FPGA and ASIC architectures, including familiarity with related new technologies and development processes. In today’s fast-paced consumer-driven market, Schmit’s contribution is essential for maintaining our technology leadership and paving the path for fast company growth.”

“Realizing the dynamic semiconductor technology trends and searching for efficient solutions to cope with the challenges are the factors which drove me to join eASIC,” said Dr. Herman Schmit. “The semiconductor industry must adapt to the new market trends in order to continue prospering. Future technologies need to efficiently exploit the increased capabilities of advanced semiconductor devices for broad usage, but must simultaneously be more widely applicable, scalable and cost-affordable. I believe that customization of digital hardware will become increasingly important and will allow designers to create specialized applications with commodity hardware, while satisfying the market demand for differentiated products. I look forward to satisfying these customer needs by delivering eASIC’s innovative products and further enhancing their scope and capabilities.”

About eASIC

eASIC is a fabless semiconductor company offering breakthrough Structured ASIC devices and configurable logic IP aimed at dramatically reducing the overall fabrication cost and time of customized chips. Low-cost, high-performance and fast-turnaround ASIC and System-on-Chip designs are enabled through patented technology of FPGA-like programmable logic coupled with ASIC-like Via-layer customizable routing. This innovative fabric efficiently employs mask-less customization with Direct-write e-Beam, and thus allows eASIC to offer NRE-free Structured ASICs of any volume required.
Founded in 1999, eASIC Corporation is privately held, headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Vinod Khosla, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB), Crescendo Ventures, and Evergreen Partners.
www.eASIC.com