Artisan Launches Advantage Memories for Nanometer Design; New Memory Products Offer 40% Speed Increase With 50% Power Reduction

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2004--Artisan Components, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARTI), a leading provider of physical intellectual property (IP), today announced the availability of its Advantage Memory family. Artisan's Advantage Memories(TM) are designed to provide high-volume SoC designers with significant competitive advantages. The Advantage Memories utilize Artisan's latest advances in memory architecture and circuit design to achieve a 40% increase in speed and a 50% reduction in power over current industry solutions. The Advantage Memories are fully compatible with Artisan's widely used integration and qualification standards and will be available at no charge to Artisan's large user community.

The result of a two-year R&D program, Artisan's Advantage Memories have recently been licensed to four of the world's leading contract IC manufacturers in support of their 90-nanometer process technologies. This breadth of manufacturing support provides SoC designers with a rich selection of Artisan Advantage based production choices.

Additionally, the Advantage Memories incorporate Artisan's second-generation Flex-Repair(TM) Redundancy solution and other circuits that enable the implementation of robust memory test and repair subsystems. This advanced technology can improve manufacturing yields for memory intensive designs. Artisan's complete Flex-Repair solution is included in the standard, no charge distribution to design teams.

Artisan's Advantage Memories incorporate technology to address many of the latest DFM (design for manufacturability) issues. This technology includes methods developed by Artisan and key partners to create high-yielding designs and to provide enhanced results with nanometer mask data processing and silicon fabrication procedures. Additionally, the memories provide support for detection and correction of soft errors. Soft errors caused by high-energy particles and cosmic rays are of concern for certain types of SoC applications.

"The goal of the Advantage Memory development program is to offer customers performance choice points that raise the bar for speed, power and manufacturability," said Neal Carney, vice president of marketing at Artisan. "By distributing the Advantage Memories through our free library program, Artisan expects to deliver a compelling set of benefits to both SoC designers and foundry partners."

Advantage Memory Availability

Four of Artisan's foundry partners have already adopted the Advantage Memories and announcements regarding product availability will be forthcoming.

About Artisan Components

Artisan Components, Inc. is a leading provider of physical intellectual property (IP) components for the design and manufacture of complex system-on-a-chip integrated circuits. Artisan's products include embedded memory, standard cell, input/output, analog and mixed-signal components, which are designed to achieve the best combination of performance, density, power and yield. Artisan has licensed its IP components to over 1,200 companies involved in integrated circuit design. Artisan is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. More information about Artisan Components, including free library access, can be found at www.artisan.com.

Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Artisan's introduction of the Advantage Platform for nanometer design, the performance of such platform and the impact of such platform on integrated circuit design and performance. These statements are subject to various risks including, without limitation, technical or other difficulties in the introduction, release and use of the platform, the performance of semiconductors designed using the Advantage Platform, market acceptance of the Advantage Platform and products designed using it and other risks and uncertainties attendant to any new product offering. We refer you also to the documents that Artisan files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in particular the section entitled "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Artisan's annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q.

Artisan Components and Artisan are registered trademarks and Advantage is a trademark of Artisan Components, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.