Sonics Joins HSA Foundation to Help Drive Open Standard for Next-Generation Heterogeneous Computing

Provides System IP to HSA Platform for Mobile and Cloud Computing

MILPITAS, CA--August 30, 2012- Sonics, Inc.®, the leading supplier of system IP for cloud-scale SoCs, today announced that the company has joined the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation as a contributor member, collaborating with other major industry leaders to support the parallel computing efforts for next-generation heterogeneous processors. In June at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit, major global technology leaders converged to announce the formation of the HSA Foundation that will help drive a unified, open industry standard architecture for heterogeneous processing, and build a strong heterogeneous compute ecosystem for the embedded, mobile and cloud computing markets.

As a contributor member, Sonics will assist with research and development, participate in and contribute extensively to the work groups, gain early access to specifications and be well positioned to provide system IP to semiconductor companies building SoCs that adopt the HSA architecture by ensuring Sonics' products are specification-compliant. Sonics will also collaborate with the members of the HSA Foundation to help advance a common specification for CPU (central processing units) and GPU (graphics processing units) interaction, drive a single architecture specification and simplify the programming model so software developers can leverage the capabilities found in modern CPUs and GPUs.

"Sonics' addition to the HSA Foundation offers system IP support that will accelerate the development of a new class of heterogeneous processors," said Greg Stoner, vice president and managing director of the HSA Foundation. "HSA is built on technological leadership and innovation from companies like Sonics that are creating unique experiences defined by a higher level of compute power and efficiency."

"Sonics is excited to be part of such a progressive industry consortium that is helping to define the next level of computing innovation with a standard platform across the mobile and cloud computing markets," said Jack Browne, vice president of marketing for Sonics. "With our leadership in scalable SoC architectural designs, commanding systems expertise and driving system IP into cloud-connected devices, Sonics is well positioned to provide semiconductor companies with the new level of performance and design proficiency needed to fuel tomorrow's devices that will define the consumer's computing experience."

About the HSA Foundation

The HSA Foundation is a not-for-profit consortium for SoC IP vendors, OEMs, academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs whose goal is to make it easy to program for parallel computing. HSA members are building a heterogeneous compute ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, for combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation utilizing CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, and support for a diverse set of high-level programming languages, thereby creating the next foundation in general purpose computing. Learn more about HSA and the HSA Foundation at www.hsafoundation.com.

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc. is the leader of system IP for cloud-scale SoCs. As a pioneer of network-on-chip (NoC) technology, Sonics offers SoC designers one of the world's largest portfolios of system IP for mobile, digital entertainment, wireless and home networking. With a broad array of silicon-proven IP, Sonics helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks associated with complex, high-speed SoC design, streamline and unify data flows and solve persistent network challenges in embedded systems with multiple cores. Sonics has more than 110 patent properties to date and has enabled its customers to ship more than one billion chips worldwide. Founded in 1996, Sonics is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. with offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.sonicsinc.com and www.sonicsinc.com/blog.