Chip Express, Lightspeed, Synplicity, and Tera Systems Team Up to Establish the “Structured ASIC Association”

Alliance Launches Website to Promote Structured ASIC Technology

Santa Clara, CA – February 11, 2004 – A group of Structured ASIC manufacturers and EDA companies -- Chip Express, Lightspeed, Synplicity, and Tera Systems -- today announced that they have formed the “Structured ASIC Association” (SAA). The founding members are collaborating to firmly establish Structured ASICs as a unique market segment and educate the industry about this new technology.

Launched today by the SAA, the new Structured ASIC website (www.structuredasic.com) was developed to provide a comprehensive source of information about Structured ASIC technology. The site provides direct access to the latest Structured ASIC news, gives detailed information about the technology, and explains the benefits associated with Structured ASICs.

Fast Turnaround, Low Cost

As defined by the SAA, Structured ASICs are a new category of semiconductors targeted at customers who are looking for the fast-turn capabilities of FPGAs without their high unit cost, and those who want to take advantage of the relatively low unit costs of ASICs without paying high NREs. Structured ASIC devices reduce much of the up-front NRE and shorten development time by using pre-diffused base metal layers to implement logic cells, memory and I/O common to many designs. Custom logic for a specific application is then implemented in the final few layers of metal, requiring far fewer mask layers for each design.

Customers using Structured ASICs reap many of the performance and cost advantages of a full custom ASIC in a device which can be fabricated in as little as three weeks. Using this revolutionary new technology, design teams can build complex ASICs for 25 percent or less of the development cost of a standard cell device, at a unit cost approximately 90 percent less than a complex FPGA.  

Both large OEMs and emerging technology firms are implementing Structured ASICs in a wide variety of market segments, including telecommunications, high-speed video processing, medical and other industrial applications. Recently released research by iSuppli shows the nominal forecast of Structured ASIC revenue reaching $250 million by the year 2007.  Another study by In-Stat/MDR predicts significant growth in the Structured ASIC market over the next several years. “As a consequence of the cost and time-to-market divergence occurring between the FPGA and standard cell markets, the semiconductor industry is changing and the market demanded we produce statistics to support the obvious,” commented Jerry Worchel, senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. “Structured ASICs are here and they’ll be here well into the future. To show the importance In-Stat/MDR attaches to this technology, we recently published a report on this market, showing nearly a 150% CAGR, between 2002 and 2007.”

About The Structured ASIC Association
The Structured ASIC Association was formed to establish and promote the Structured ASIC market segment and name.  The goals of the association are to establish Structured ASIC as a unique ASIC segment within the analysts/media community, and to educate and inform the market of the benefits of Structured ASIC technology. The SAA defines a Structured ASIC as “an integrated circuit architecture that delivers reduced entry cost and faster time to silicon using a predefined arrangement of late-stage mask-customizable logic and pre-diffused macros.” This means customers can expect low NRE, low unit pricing, and fast turnaround time for prototype and production Structured ASIC devices. For more information, please visit the Structured ASIC website at www.structuredasic.com.

The Structured ASIC Association is open to new members who actively participate in the Structured ASIC market. Interested parties can contact member representatives listed below for more information.

About Chip Express
Chip Express is a leading manufacturer of high performance Structured ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits). The company's innovative, patented technology consolidates wafer manufacture tooling, reduces time-to-market and minimizes the cost of initial production. The company's Structured ASIC technology is widely used in high-end consumer electronics, communications, automotive telematics, computing peripherals, industrial control, medical equipment and military/aerospace systems. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Chip Express is a privately held corporation, founded in the U.S. in 1989. The company holds two subsidiaries: Chip Express (Israel) Ltd., which performs Research & Development, and Chip Express UK Ltd., which manages European operations. For more information, visit the Chip Express website at http://www.chipexpress.com.

About Lightspeed
Lightspeed Semiconductor is the premier supplier of structured array technology to the semiconductor industry.  We invented the structured array to reduce semiconductor development expense by an order of magnitude, while accelerating time-to-market up to six months vs traditional design methods.  Our  structured array technology leads the industry in lower costs, higher density and performance, and fastest time-to-silicon.  Lightspeed’s customers include both fabless and IDM semiconductor manufacturers. For more information visit http://www.lightspeed.com.

About Synplicity, Inc.
Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP) is a leading provider of software products that enable the rapid and effective design and verification of semiconductors used in networking and communications, computer and peripheral, consumer and military/aerospace electronics systems.  Synplicity leverages its innovative logic synthesis, physical synthesis and verification software solutions to improve performance and shorten development time for complex programmable logic devices, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), Structured ASICs and system-on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits.  The company’s fast, easy-to-use products offer high quality of results, support industry-standard design languages (VHDL and Verilog) and run on popular platforms.  Synplicity employs over 260 people in its 20 facilities worldwide.  Synplicity is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.  For more information on Synplicity, visit http://www.synplicity.com.

About Tera Systems, Inc.
Tera Systems, Inc. provides a leading front-end design planning solution for integrated circuits that results in first-time silicon success in record time. Tera’s patented RTL design-planning product is the only solution that lets front-end designers build accurate, predictive models to identify root causes of potential problems rather than symptoms, fix these before they occur, hand-off designs at the RTL level for back-end implementation, and produce chips that perform as expected.  Endorsed by top semiconductor companies, Tera also provides specialized optimization for Structured ASIC designs, further reducing turnaround time and costs for these applications. It gives front-end designers needed visibility into the timing and physical restrictions imposed by Structured ASIC architecture. For more information, visit the Tera Systems web site at http://www.terasystems.com.