Hudson Soft Licenses Tensilica’s Xtensa Processor For High-Speed Graphics Controller

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica (Apr 24, 2013)

High-Volume Consumer Electronics Supplier Optimizes Xtensa Processor To Advance Graphics Performance

Santa Clara, CALIF. and Yokohama, JAPAN , October 15, 2002 – Tensilica, Inc., the leading provider of configurable and extensible microprocessors, today announced that another high-volume consumer electronics company, Hudson Soft Company, Ltd., has licensed the Xtensa microprocessor core. Hudson Soft, headquartered in Hokkaido, Japan, will design a new versatile graphics controller for use in future consumer products.  A well-known name to millions of Japanese consumers, Hudson Soft joins Tensilica's growing list of consumer electronics customers, which already includes leading suppliers of digital cameras and cellular phones.

"Xtensa will enable us to deliver breakthrough graphics quality to manufacturers of small, battery-operated hand-held devices as well as specialty entertainment consoles," said Satoshi Murakami, executive officer, Core Technology Division, Hudson Soft.  "The ability to configure and extend the Xtensa processor to our exact needs lets us get maximum performance with a shorter time to market."

"Hudson's implementation continues to demonstrate the unmatched flexibility of our configurable and extensible processor," said Bernie Rosenthal, senior vice president of marketing and sales for Tensilica. "Just as we continue to drive our technology into high-volume consumer markets, we are also experiencing significant success in a variety of growing high-performance markets, all using the same Xtensa platform."

The Xtensa configurable and extensible microprocessor architecture provides a powerful, integrated hardware and software development environment with thousands of configuration options and an unlimited range of customer-specific extensions. The environment enables designers to carefully tune the processor for their particular application. With an easy-to-use graphical interface, designers can take advantage of Tensilica's processor generator to create customized MPU solutions with specialized functional and instructions. Because these instructions are recognized as "native" by a complete set of software development tools, developers can simultaneously tune both application software and processor hardware to meet specific speed, power and feature goals.

About Hudson
Hudson Soft is a leading developer of games and game related software. The company has been a pioneer for almost thirty years, creating numerous firsts in the game industry and satisfying game players with unique and deep content.  Hudson's Core Technology division is responsible for an impressive list of successful technologies, including the development of original game consoles ("PC Engine" and "PC-FX"), development environments, extensive middleware tools, libraries and compilers for successive game platforms, semiconductors and devices for game consoles. The company is headquartered in Sapporo, Japan. Ph: 81-11-821-4622   www.hudson.co.jp

About Tensilica
Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the fast-growing market for configurable processors and software development tools for high volume, embedded systems. Using the company's proprietary Xtensa Processor Generator, system-on-chip (SOC) designers can develop a processor subsystem hardware design and a complete software development tool environment tailored to their specific requirements in hours. Tensilica's solutions provide a proven, easy-to-use, methodology that enables designers to achieve optimum application performance in minimum design time. The Company has over 140 engineers engaged in research, development, and customer support from its offices in Santa Clara, California; Burlington, Massachusetts; Princeton, NJ; Austin, Texas; Raleigh, NC; Oxford, U.K.; Stockholm, Sweden; Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.; and Yokohama, Japan. Tensilica is headquartered in Santa Clara, California  (95054) at 3255-6 Scott Boulevard, and can be reached at (408) 986-8000 or via www.tensilica.com.

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Editors' Notes:

"Tensilica" and "Xtensa" are registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Tensilica's announced licensees are Avision, Bay Microsystems, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Cypress, ETRI, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems, IC4IC, Ikanos Communications, JNI Corporation, Marvell (Galileo Technology), Mindspeed Technologies, National Semiconductor, NEC Networks, NEC Solutions, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., ONEX Communications, Olympus Optical, OptiX Networks, Osaka & Kyoto Universities, TranSwitch Corporation, Trebia Networks, Victor Company of Japan (JVC) and ZiLOG.