VSI Alliance Realigns to Address Full Spectrum of SoC/IP Technical and Commercial Issues

ARM Ltd. joins VSIA Board of Directors

Wakefield, MA. – June 1, 2004 –The VSI Alliance (VSIA) today announced a restructure plan that replaces its former Development Working Groups (DWGs), Technical Committee (TC) and Adoption Groups (AGs) with three working groups call “Pillars.” The functions of the DWGs, TC and AG will be combined within each Pillar creating a more efficient structure. Additionally, VSIA will focus on three Pillars instead of the nine former DWGs. Two of the pillars will focus on specific issues that have gained significant industry interest: IP quality and IP protection. The third pillar will concentrate on research and development, ensuring that the VSIA focuses on next-generation issues. Each Pillar will address both technical and commercial issues and will have marketing and legal support from the organization. Additionally, VSIA today announced that ARM Ltd. (LSE: ARM) has joined its board of directors.

The Board’s decision to restructure VSIA is based on research and member input about the group’s commercial and technical relevance as the SoC/IP umbrella organization. The research clearly indicated that the need for standards-based solutions to SoC and IP development, IP integration and reuse is increasing in importance and complexity. It was also clear that while the VSIA is a well-experienced umbrella group dealing with these challenges, the organization needed to reorganize in order to more effectively identify and solve the complex issues, and insure their adoption across the industry.

To solve the problem of both relevance and adoption, each Pillar will be supported by at least four large companies that will work to simultaneously solve business and technical issues prior to releasing any work to the public. The groups will have autonomy and all product reviews will take place within the Pillar and not the organization at large. This allows the Pillars to work unencumbered and quickly. By requiring the participation of major companies in each Pillar, the issues studied and the resulting solutions are more likely to focus on critical industry problems and the results will be broadly adopted. Once standards or documents are ratified, they will be available to members at no cost and for a fee to non-members.

"No organization serving the rapidly changing semiconductor industry can remain static over time and also remain relevant," said Jim Lipman, EDA, ASIC, and IP consultant. "With the new structure in place at VSIA, the organization now has a better chance at identifying and solving the most pressing industry challenges and driving adoption of their solutions.”

In addition to the minimum of four large member companies, VSIA member companies of any size are also encouraged to participate in the Pillars. The Pillar members may invite participation from independent consultants as well. Initially, Pillar chairs will be temporarily appointed until a formal election can be held. The Pillar chairs will participate at a Board level in driving decisions about identifying and prioritizing SoC/IP issues and helping the VSIA Board to define the direction of the organization.

Pillar Members

There are a number of companies currently active in the efforts of Quality IP and IP Protection and it is expected their efforts will continue as Pillar members. The companies include: Agere Systems, Inc., ARM Ltd., Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (previously Motorola), IBM Corporation, Intel, Mentor Graphics Corp., Sonics, Inc., STMicroelectronics SA, Synopsys, Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). The R&D Pillar is open to the general membership and we expect it will include many of the companies who are currently involved in working groups studying the following issues: analog, signal integrity, verification of implementation and platform-based design.

The chairs are temporarily appointed and will be formally elected by the Pillar members within the next few months. Bill Billowitch, Agere Systems, will chair the IP Quality Pillar and Kathy Werner, Freescale Semiconductor, will be the Vice Chair. Ian Mackintosh, Sonics, will chair the IP Protection Pillar and Juan- Antonio Carballo, IBM, will chair the R&D Pillar.

Member Benefits

Benefits of VSIA membership include:

• The opportunity for participants to influence the scope of SoC/IP business decisions and technical work undertaken by the Pillars thereby insuring your company’s interests.
• Identifying and influencing the scope of any future technical work undertaken in the VSIA.
• Exploring and incubating important issues within the VSIA rather than take on the financial burden of this R&D effort within your company.
• Exchanging business and technical information with industry leaders who are VSIA members, benefiting from their insight into today’s and tomorrow’s design challenges and solutions.
• Access to all VSIA work during development if you are a Pillar member or, at no cost, when the work is ratified.

Member companies are encouraged to join the Pillars and non-member companies are invited to find out more about the VSIA at www.vsi.org or by contacting Susan Cain, executive director at 831-662-6092.

ARM Joins VSIA Board

In support of the restructuring of the VSIA, ARM has been elected as a Board member company and they have appointed John Goodenough, Global Design Methodologies Manager, as their representative on the Board.

“Having ARM on the VSIA board of directors reinforces the new direction of the organization,” said Mike Kaskowitz, VSIA president. “Our new mission drives our structure, ensures that VSIA will be guided by the leaders of the SoC industry, and that the business-to-business solutions and the technical standards, specifications and documents we create will reflect the needs of the industry and will be broadly adopted.”

About VSIA

The VSI Alliance (VSIA) is an open, international organization that includes representatives from all segments of the SoC industry: System houses, Semiconductor vendors, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies, and Intellectual Property (IP) providers. VSIA’s mission is to dramatically enhance the productivity of the SoC design community by providing leading edge commercial and technical solutions and insight into the development, integration and reuse of IP. VSIA has wide industry participation with more than 70 member companies from around the world. Membership is open to any company with an interest in the development and promotion of business solutions and open standards used in the design of System-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org.

The VSI Alliance is a trademark of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance. All other brands or trademarks are the property of their respective holders and should be treated as such.