Parthus and 1st Silicon License Agreement Provides New Foundry Source for System-on-Chip IP

Phase-lock loop intellectual property essential in designs and foundry portfolio

San Jose, CALIFORNIA and Kuching, Sarawak MALAYSIA; September 16, 2002 -- Parthus Technologies Plc and 1st Silicon (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. have announced a licensing agreement that lets system-on-chip (SoC) designers access essential Parthus phase lock loop (PLL) intellectual property (IP) from 1st Silicon as part of the Company's foundry service.

"Foundries play a key role in delivering silicon-proven IP cores that form the central building blocks essential to system-on-chip designs," said Dr. W. John Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of 1st Silicon.  "We've chosen

Parthus for their flexibility and timely creation of PLLs on-demand, and because they offer industry-leading jitter performance that is well recognized among the design community."

"We are delighted to have 1st Silicon as a licensee for our innovative PLLXpert technology," said John Ryan, VP and General Manager of Wireline and Mixed-Signal at Parthus Technologies.  "By choosing PLLXpert Online,

1st Silicon are providing their customers with a technology design platform that reduces the cost and speeds the time-to-market for their silicon products."

As the first phase of the agreement, 1st Silicon will verify the Parthus PLL IP in silicon using a test chip containing multiple PLL instantiations designed to exercise the extremes of the design range.  Further verification will be completed through simulations using an automated test bench designed to test all valid PLL configurations in 1st Silicon's 0.25- and 0.18-micron CMOS process technologies.  

Clock synthesis cores (PLLs) remain one of the most challenging technology blocks to develop, and they continue to impose considerable risk on the successful deployment of IC products.  Parthus' PLLXpertT, an online PLL

generation engine, enables the design of risk-free, silicon-proven PLLs in minutes  ¾  shortening the typical development time by months.  Through PLLXpert's user interface, 1st Silicon customers can design and deploy

silicon proven, high-performance PLL cores in minutes online through www.PLLXpert.com.  No prior training, in-depth PLL design knowledge or additional EDA tools are required.  

A 1st Silicon customer receives personalized datasheets, Verilog models, and other front-end deliverables at no charge.  IP cores in GDSII format can be delivered in minutes DRC and LVS to 1st Silicon registered users.

The software can be accessed through the Parthus website in October of this year.

About 1st Silicon (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.

1st Silicon is a dedicated semiconductor foundry founded in 1998 by the Malaysian State of Sarawak.  1st Silicon's 200mm wafer fab has a capacity in excess of 30,000 wafers per month when fully ramped. The Company is in volume production with 0.25mm digital and mixed-signal CMOS technologies and is now providing 0.18mm process prototypes.  1st Silicon's customers include integrated device manufacturers and fabless semiconductor companies from the U.S., Japan, and Asia.  The Company has its headquarters in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, and a U.S. registered subsidiary corporation located in San Jose, California.  More information is available on the Company's website at www.1stsilicon.com.

About Parthus

Parthus Technologies (www.parthus.com) is a leading provider of platform-level intellectual property (IP) targeting the mobile Internet marketplace. Platform-level IP (i.e. incorporating the radio, baseband and software design in one integrated solution) greatly reduces licensees cost, risk, complexity and time-to-market for new generation semiconductor products. Parthus offers an unrivalled portfolio of platform-level IP spanning wireless communications (Bluetooth; 802.11; 2.5G GSM/GPRS; 3G W-CDMA), and application processing and multimedia (PDA/Smartphone for Microsoft, Symbian and Linux OS; mobile multimedia; GPS Location; application acceleration) technologies either as stand-alone or integrated solutions.  Parthus licenses its technologies to some of the worlds leading semiconductor companies.  Parthus is headquartered in Dublin with offices in 14 worldwide and is listed on the London Stock Exchange (London: PRH) and NASDAQ (Nasdaq: PRTH).