Actions Semiconductor Licenses MIPS32 Cores for Portable Multimedia Applications

BEIJING, CHINA and MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, July 20, 2005 - MIPS Technologies, Inc., (NASDAQ: MIPS), a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer and business applications, today announced that Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd., one of China’s top ten IC design firms, has licensed the MIPS32® 4KEc® Pro and MIPS32 M4K™ Pro cores to develop next-generation SoCs for portable digital multimedia applications. This agreement underscores the suitability of the MIPS® architecture for the rapidly expanding portable multimedia market.

Portable multimedia devices include both portable multimedia players (PMP) and digital audio (MP3) players. According to research firm In-Stat, current forecasts of this market
indicate dramatic growth. For example, the market for MP3 players alone is estimated to exceed a total of 104 million units by 2009, up from 27.8 million in 2004.

MIPS Technologies offers SoC designers a tailored solution for high-performance, low power consumer applications. The MIPS32 4KEc Pro core is ideal for PMP designs because it offers a full-featured MMU and large caches required for video-based applications running on Linux and other OS environments. Well-suited for MP3 players, the MIPS32 M4K Pro core offers an extensive range of highly optimized software audio codecs for playback of multiple audio formats and is the smallest cores offered by MIPS Technologies. The CorExtend™ capability of these Pro Series cores enables SoC designers to add proprietary instructions and efficiently implement hardware video code logic.

“After extensive benchmarking, we determined that MIPS Technologies offers the best solution for our current and future product development needs,” said Mr. Zhao Guangmin, Vice President, Actions Semiconductor. “Consumer demand for sophisticated digital audio and video entertainment continues to exceed everyone’s expectations. Leveraging the flexibility of the user-defined-instructions, high performance and low power consumption of the MIPS cores allows us to deliver products with the full functionality and superior battery life that today’s consumers look for.”
“Actions Semiconductor is one of China’s fastest growing companies, with demonstrated expertise in portable multimedia product development and significant worldwide market share,” said James Mac Hale, Vice President of Asia Operations for MIPS Technologies. “We’re excited to be working with Actions to help them realize the low power advantages of our industry-leading technology.”

This announcement follows MIPS Technologies’ opening of its China office and China R&D Center in March of this year. This new licensing agreement was announced at a press briefing today in Beijing in the presence of Mr Xu Xiao Tian, Secretary General of China Semi-Conductor Industry Association (CSIA) and Madame Wang Qing Sheng, Chairperson of the Design Division of CSIA. Executives from Actions and MIPS Technologies were also in attendance, including Zhao Guangmin, Vice President, Actions Semiconductor, James Mac Hale, Vice President Asia Operations, MIPS Technologies, Inc. and Kin Lai, Chief Representative for China, MIPS Technologies, Inc.

About MIPS Technologies
MIPS Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer and business applications. The company drives the broadest architectural alliance that is delivering 32- and 64-bit embedded RISC solutions. The company licenses its intellectual property to semiconductor companies, ASIC developers and system OEMs. MIPS Technologies and its licensees offer the widest range of robust, scalable processors in standard, custom, semi-custom and application-specific products. The company is based in Mountain View, CA, and can be reached at +1 (650) 567-5000 or http://www.mips.com.

About Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd.
Based in Zhuhai, China, Actions Semiconductor is one of the leading global providers of ICs which are widely used in MP3 decoding. The company’s focus is on high performance, low power portable media processing SoCs and total solution design. In 2004, Actions Semiconductor was ranked as one of China’s top ten IC design houses in 2004 by CCID and the China Semiconductor Industry Association.

Contact Phone: +86-756-3392353-1101; website: http://www.actions.com.cn.