Tensilica and CSIP of Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of PRC Establish First Joint IP Core Lab

SANTA CLARA, Calif. & BEIJING--Feb. 23, 2006--Tensilica®, Inc. and CSIP of Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of PRC today announced the establishment of a joint IP core lab during a signing ceremony attended by Ding Wenwu, director of the Product Department of MII, Dr. Qui Shangin, head of CSIP, and Chris Rowen, president and CEO of Tensilica.

"It is our great honor to be the first company to set up an IP core lab with CSIP," stated Chris Rowen, Tensilica president and CEO. "We will strive to provide world leading processor technology for Chinese clients through this lab so as to accelerate China's SOC design and create more ICs with independent IP."

The IP core lab will serve independent Chinese IC companies and help meet the ever-increasing demands for technology repetition in the IC industry. It will provide IP verification service, especially SoC (system on chip) design service, and support infrastructure to promote the development of China's IC industry.

Both parties will provide training services to companies through the lab and promote Tensilica's leading configurable processor technology. Tensilica will also offer evaluations for SOC design support to companies.

Tensilica's configurable microprocessor core development tools and processor technologies are expected to introduce brand new design concepts to China's IC industry. In addition, Tensilica's newly launched Diamond Standard Series will be very attractive products for Chinese clients.

"The establishment of the joint lab between CSIP and Tensilica marks a good beginning of the platform building for CSIP SOC verification public service," stated Mr. Qiu Shan Qin, CSIP's person-in-charge. "The advancement of Tensilica's configurable processor technology and Diamond Standard Series is a known fact. In today's world, where science and technology develop by leaps and bounds, we also hope that the establishment of this joint lab will gradually guide companies to make full use of CSIP's public service resources in their production design process so as to shorten the time to market and reduce the design difficulties faced by companies. We cooperate with excellent IP providers because we want to do more things for the industry together."

About CSIP

Established and headed by the Ministry of Information Industry, CSIP (www.csip.org.cn) leads the development of the industry and is a neutral and open agency which provides public services for China's software and IC companies. As an important unit through which the Ministry of Information Industry offers public services for China's software and IC industry, CSIP continuously brings in new resources and engages in building up the SoC public service platform. At present, CSIP has already had good software and hardware environments and service ability, capable of providing public evaluation and selection for companies' IP cores and SoC platform promotion services so as to improve the design ability of the whole IC industry.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors on the market today, in both an off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Tensilica's low-power, benchmark proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leaders in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. All Tensilica processor cores are complete with a matching software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.