Amphion builds communications semiconductor IP market share - extends North American sales operations into Canada

San Jose, California (July 13, 2001) - Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) provider Amphion Semiconductor, Inc. (formerly Integrated Silicon Systems) today announces the establishment of a third direct sales office for North America with the appointment of Montreal-based Guy Côté as the company's new Sales Director for Canada. Amphion is the world's leading provider of application-specific IP Cores and system-level Platform IP for multimedia, wireless and broadband communications System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design.

"Amphion delivers the application-specific cores that semiconductor designers need to integrate cost-effective SoC, ASIC and FPGA designs, especially those for high-performance DSP and multi-channel telecommunications applications. No other chipless semiconductor company can match Amphion's technology leadership in application-specific IP cores for wireless networks, image compression and broadband communications," said J G Doherty, CEO and co-founder of Amphion. "We've now established a network of sales and support offices in Europe, Japan, and the US. This new and direct sales presence in the Canadian market helps Amphion accelerate its business development plans in the fast growing North American market for semiconductor IP."

North America Sales Operations

Guy Côté joins Amphion as Sales Director, Canada and heads the company's Canadian sales and customer support operations from offices near Montreal, Quebec. He is responsible for business development and strategic customer relationships across Canada for the company's extensive range of application-specific IP cores for multimedia, wireless and broadband applications. Amphion's two existing direct sales offices for North American markets serve Western Area USA from San Jose, California and East Coast US from Boston, Massachusetts.

Canadian Sales Director

Monsieur Côté brings to Amphion over ten years of technical sales, applications engineering and design engineering experience in SIP, semiconductor component distribution and electronic design automation (EDA) industries. He joins Amphion from Electro Source Cores where he was Vice-President Strategic Partners; ESI Cores, a division of Electro Source, Inc., was created in 1999 to focus entirely on semiconductor Intellectual Property ("Cores") for SoC, ASIC and FPGA. Prior to Electro Source Cores, he worked in sales management positions at Synplicity [Nasdaq: SYNP], the logic synthesis company, and in technical sales with Insight Electronics, the largest distributor of semiconductors in North and South America. Guy has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the Université de Montréal.

Amphion's new Canadian sales operations are based in St-Lazare, 30 minutes from downtown Montreal, Quebec:

Amphion Canada:

E-mail: gcote@amphion.com
Tel: (450) 455-5544
Mobile: (514) 865-5980
Fax: (450) 455-5543
URL: http://www.Amphion.com

Cores for Communications

Amphion (formerly ISS) provides a range of low-power, area-efficient, high-performance IP core solutions for video, image, speech and signal processing applications implemented in SoC, ASIC or FPGA technologies. For example, the Amphion CS4100 ASVC, a range of multi-channel ADPCM IP cores, can be used to implement up to 12,000 speech coding channels on a single ASIC. New products introduced this year include the Amphion CS6550 ASVC, a high-definition MPEG-2 Decoder IP core for digital video applications, and the Amphion CS3500 ASVCs, Turbocode IP cores for 3GPP and CDMA2000 compliant communications networks.
 

About Amphion

Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific virtual components (ASVCs) and system-level IP core solutions (Platform IP) for IP-based System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuit designs for wireless and broadband communications applications. Amphion delivers video/image compression, speech/voice coding, and channel coding solutions for consumer and communications applications. Amphion offers a range of products designed to be the cornerstones of advanced convergence products. Using proprietary techniques for direct-mapped implementations of digital signal processing functions and algorithms in hardware, Amphion develops and licenses IP cores that realize 10X to 1000X improvements in performance compared to conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP processors. Amphion is a privately-held company with corporate headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing headquarters in San Jose, California. Amphion was formally known as Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd, or ISS.

For more information, visit the Amphion website at http://www.Amphion.com

Contacts :

David Mann
Amphion, Europe
+44 (0)28 9050-4040
marcom@amphion.com

Ron Sailors
Amphion, USA
(408) 392-8982
marcom@amphion.com

Notes to Editors:
Amphion, The Amphion logo, "Virtual Components for the Converging World", "Innovation by Amphion", "The Multimedia ASVC Company", are trademarks of Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. All other brand names or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.