VSIA QIP Metric Completes Beta Program QIP Metric now available to public

Wakefield, MA. - January 9, 2006 - The VSI Alliance (VSIA) today announced the release of the QIP (Quality IP) Metric Version 2.0 following an extensive beta program that began in June 2005. Companies that have participated in the beta program include Cadence Design Systems, Denali Software, edacentrum, Freescale Semiconductor, LSI Logic, Mentor Graphics, Philips, STMicroelectronics, Japanese-based STARC (Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center) and others. The VSIA QIP Metric has received strong support from beta participants and is already being adopted within many of the beta program companies. To further drive adoption of the QIP Metric, it is available for download free of charge on VSIA's website www.vsi.org.

"The ability to determine the quality of an IP core is critical to the development of today's large SoCs," said Kathy Werner, IP Reuse manger, Freescale Semiconductor Inc; VSIA IP Quality Pillar Chairperson.  The members of the IP Quality Pillar and the Beta participants have invested thousands of man-hours into the QIP Metric helping to ensure that we provide the industry with a meaningful metric that can effectively decrease time spent in the design cycle and encourage easy reuse."

About VSIA QIP Metric

The VSIA QIP Metric is a tool that can aggressively reduce the time typically required to make an IP purchase decision and to integrate the core.  The Metric helps the IP vendor and IP consumer communicate based on an objective foundation. Besides setting up the basis for measuring a core's characteristics against an industry-approved list of attributes, the metric provides a view of the IP vendor's general approach to IP development. This enables a continuous improvement mechanism, and in turn, levels the playing field for vendors and allows an integrator to evaluate similar cores from competing vendors.
In Version 2.0 the QIP Metric is easier to use than its predecessor and is more streamlined. This version also has simpler IP-qualification metrics covering documentation, deliverables, and information specific to the IP integrator as well as IP development practices. The VSIA QIP Metric 2.0 includes the newly added vendor assessment and the requirements for Soft IP have been restructured and revisited.

The hard IP (HIP) worksheet being co-developed by VSIA and FSA is targeting a mid 2006 beta release. "VSIA and FSA provide a unique combination of technical development and industry community skills, which has seen the HIP effort flourish. The HIP worksheet will offer a much needed and relevant metric for our members, and set the groundwork for future collaborations with VSIA," says Wayne Nesbit, Chairman of FSA's Technology Committee and Sr. VP of Operations at Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. Other QIP Metric worksheets that will be released in future updates include software IP and verification IP.

For more information on the VSIA, go to www.vsi.org

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.