MemCore to License High-Performance DDR SDRAM PHY with DLL Solution to ESS Technology

Santa Clara, CA, Oct 16, 2006 – MemCore Inc, the leading pure play Memory Controller IP solutions company, today announced that ESS Technology (Nasdaq: ESST) has selected MemCore to provide a DDR Memory Interface solution for a new, highly integrated IC for Blu-ray DVD and HD-DVD players. ESS Technology selected MemCore’s MP4010 DDR SDRAM PHY with Digital DLL licensed as a hard macro. A detailed product description for the MP4010 is located on the MemCore website at www.memcoreinc.com.

ESS Technology, Inc., designs and markets high-performance digital video processor and imaging sensor semiconductors for the consumer digital entertainment, digital home, and camera-enabled cellular phone markets. ESS products include highly integrated chips for DVD players, digital media players, digital audio systems, and camera phones. The MemCore PHY with DLL IP core will be used in the ESS Blu-ray DVD and HD-DVD player ICs.

"Our Blu-ray and HD-DVD ICs requires high speed memory interfaces to process H.264, VC1 and MPEG2 A/V streams. We evaluated DDR memory PHYs from multiple vendors for our design,” said Aki Kaniel, director of marketing at ESS Technology. "We found that the MemCore MP4010 was the best fit for our application requirements. The integrated PHY and DLL, licensed as a hard macro, reduces our integration effort and improves our time to market.”

“We are finding increasing customer interest in hard-macro implementations of our MP4010 PHY with DLL solution," said Raghavan Menon, president & CEO of MemCore, Inc. "Having an application optimized solution can significantly improve our customers’ time to market and lower their development cost. Our high-performance, low-power and small die footprint are also key advantages and contribute to our growing customer base."

The MP4010 is just one of several memory IP Cores offered by MemCore.

• The popular MC4001 DDR1/DDR2 Intelligent Memory Interface is a high-performance and low-latency memory controller for DDR1/DDR2-based systems. The MC4001 utilizes an innovative scheduling algorithm that delivers the highest system bandwidth in the industry.

• The MC4002 GDDR Intelligent Memory Interface is a high-performance and low-latency memory controller for Graphics DDR1/DDR2/DDR3-based systems. The MC4002 utilizes an innovative scheduling algorithm that optimizes system bandwidth for the block transfers common in graphics applications.

• The MC4003 MobileSDR/MobileDDR Intelligent Memory Interface is a low-power high system performance memory controller for MobileDDR-based systems. The MC4003 utilizes an innovative scheduling algorithm that delivers the highest system bandwidth, with the lowest power consumption, in the industry.

About MemCore, Inc

MemCore is the first and only pure-play Memory Interface Solutions company. MemCore provides customers with Memory Controller IP, verification environments, customized back-end interfaces, memory models, hard and soft PHY and DLL timing components and applications support- everything a customer needs to successfully implement leading edge high-performance memory interface solutions. Visit MemCore at www.memcoreinc.com.

About ESS Technology
ESS Technology, Inc., designs and markets high-performance digital video processors and image sensor semiconductors for the consumer digital entertainment, digital home, and camera-enabled cellular phone markets. ESS products include highly integrated chips for DVD players, digital media players, digital audio systems, and camera-enabled cellular phones. ESS is headquartered in Fremont, California and the company’s stock is traded on the Nasdaq National market under “ESST”. For more information, please visit ESS Technology at www.esstech.com.