ProDesign Goes China; ProDesign Names Eastwell Technologies as Distributor in China for Its CHIPit High Speed ASIC Prototyping Systems

MUNICH, Germany & SAN JOSE, Calif. & SHANGHAI, China--Dec. 23, 2005--ProDesign, a leading supplier of high-speed ASIC and SoC verification platforms, announced today that Eastwell Technologies will be the distribution partner for the company's successful CHIPit line of high speed ASIC prototyping & emulation system. Eastwell Technologies will be distributing and supporting CHIPit throughout China.

"ProDesign gets more and more requests from customers in China and we see that the Chinese electronic development market is nearly exploding. To take care of this new market and its customers in the best way, we have been searching for a partner with strong experience in the distribution of EDA products and who understands the market of verification tools," stated Gunnar Scholl, Director Marketing and Business Development of ProDesign. "With Eastwell, which has also been the distributor for Mentor Graphics several years, we found the right partner with a lot of experience in the EDA market. We are quite impressed with Eastwell's professionalism and their extreme technical and sales competence. We are very enthusiastic about our new partnership with Eastwell, and anticipate it will be a long and successful relationship."

Eastwell's founding member and CEO, Michael Xie, explained, "We are very impressed with ProDesigns success in Europe and North America over the last year. The demand for high speed hardware assisted verification solutions for complex ASIC and SoC design is growing throughout China. With CHIPit, ProDesign offers the fastest multiple FPGA ASIC Prototyping solution on the market and meets China's design verification and software validation needs, especially for telecommunication and multimedia applications, where you have to verify your design in highest speed. With ProDesign's expertise in complex board design, the CHIPit products offer high quality reliable solutions for FPGA based prototyping systems. We are all very excited to promote and distribute CHIPit in China and we have confidence in ProDesign's team and CHIPit to be successful in the Chinese market."

About CHIPit hardware-assisted verification platforms

The CHIPit line provides an integrated set of tools with debug capabilities that provide a dual solution for hardware and software verification and validation throughout the project life cycle. Based on FPGAs, modular CHIPit platforms give design engineers unprecedented speed and flexibility to validate algorithm performance, verify hardware implementation, and assist in hardware/software co-development and co-verification. The CHIPit platforms can handle capacities up to 10 million ASIC gates and run at system speeds of up to 200MHz. Over 150 CHIPit systems are installed worldwide at customers including ST Microelectronics, Philips Semiconductors, Thomson Multimedia, Sony Semiconductors and many more.

About Eastwell

The privately held company was founded in 1995 and has 16 employees currently, with sales offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, and finance operations in Hong Kong. Eastwell Technologies has more than 10 years of experience as total EDA solution provider in China's electronic design industry. The company has been the distributor of BTA, Cadence, VeriBest, Synopsys's Saber, Mentor Graphics and Silvaco, and the company's dedicated technical support team can provide various services including pre- and post support, design follow integration and customization. Eastwell has successfully developed business in China with over 350 customers in various industries including ASIC/SOC/IC design, semiconductor device & process simulation and device modeling, PCB/FPGA design in telecomm, transportation systems, aviation and space technology, digital TV, mobile phone.

For more information about Eastwell Technologies, please visit: http://www.eastwell.com.cn.

About ProDesign

The privately held company was founded in 1981 and has over 80 employees, with various facilities for research, design, and sales in Germany, France and the U.S. ProDesign has more than twenty-four years of experience as a service provider and manufacturer in the electronics industry. The company's products and services include the CHIPit family of hardware-assisted verification tools to validate algorithm performance, verify hardware implementation, and assist in hardware/software co-development and co-verification to reduce the verification time dramatically.

For more information about the company's prototyping products, please visit: http://www.uchipit.com.