Artisan Components And SliceX Announce Agreement To Provide Phase Locked Loops To Artisan Customers

Joint Agreement Makes Available High-Performance PLLs To Over 900 Companies Using Artisan Libraries

SUNNYVALE, Calif., -- March 25, 2002 -- Artisan Components, Inc., (Nasdaq: ARTI), a leading provider of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and Salt Lake Integrated Circuit EXperts (SliceX, Inc.), a leading analog intellectual property (IP) and design services company, today announced an agreement to supply Artisan library users with compatible, high-performance Phase Locked Loops (PLLs). Under the terms of the agreement, Artisan and SliceX will work together to deliver industry leading, high-quality PLLs designed to specific customer requirements. Customers can order the PLLs directly from Artisan Components.

SliceX's PLLs feature excellent stability, very low jitter, compact area and minimal power consumption. The PLLs can be individually designed to fit into any IC core or into an Artisan pad ring. Additionally, many PLL versions are also available off-the-shelf.

"SliceX's experienced team of VLSI engineers has an excellent reputation for mixed-signal design capability," said Mark Templeton, Artisan's president and CEO. "With this strategic agreement, Artisan is now able to provide our customers with customizable PLL solutions that meet wide power supply and temperature ranges and can be used in a large range of applications."

"Artisan's market share makes it the premier provider of IC design libraries," said Tom Wolf, CEO of SliceX. "We are pleased with the agreement because it allows SliceX to combine our state-of-the-art technology with Artisan's technical expertise to offer high-quality mixed-signal solutions for the thousands of IC designers using Artisan libraries."

Product Availability SliceX's standard and custom PLLs are available for purchase from Artisan Components. For more information, visit Artisan's web site at www.artisan.com or contact an Artisan sales representative with design requirements via e-mail at sales@artisan.com or telephone at 408-734-5600.

About SliceX SliceX is a mixed signal design center specializing in analog IP and turnkey custom system solutions. SliceX maintains its competitive edge by researching and building state-of-the-art technologies while pushing shorter development cycles and cost reductions. SliceX is a skilled developer of system architectures and custom layout solutions that have been proven leaders in semiconductor, imaging, consumer, medical, and communications industries. SliceX boasts experience in all major processes as well as the expert mask designers and skilled engineers that are needed to facilitate system-on-a-chip projects. SliceX, Inc. is a privately held company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. World Wide Web address: http://www.slicex.com.

About Artisan Components
Artisan Components, Inc., (Nasdaq: ARTI) is a world leader in intellectual property (IP) components, providing high-quality solutions for many of the world's leading semiconductor foundries, integrated device manufacturers, ASIC vendors and IC design teams. Artisan's Process-Perfect™ memory generators, standard cell and I/O libraries are optimized to achieve the full-speed, density and low-power potential of each semiconductor process. Each product is verified using the industry's most comprehensive QA and validation procedures and delivered ready to use with a complete set of views and models supporting leading design tools. Artisan's headquarters are located at 141 Caspian Court, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1013.

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