STMicroelectronics and CoWare Announce Comprehensive Partnership For System-Level Design

GENEVA and SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 10 -- STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) and CoWare(TM), Inc. today announced a multi-year partnership to improve system design productivity and reduce time-to-market for next-generation consumer devices. With this agreement, CoWare N2C(TM) software will be widely deployed throughout ST as the core system-level design software and the delivery vehicle for system-on-chip (SoC) platform-based design.

``CoWare's system-level design methodology has made a large impact on our design productivity, especially at the early phases of the architecture design where all the major decisions are made,'' stated Joel Monnier, Corporate Vice President and Central R&D Director for ST. ``Using CoWare's methodology, we have been able to cut the design time required to create a new system platform from 24 months to 6 months and the time required for a derivative platform from 10 weeks to 2-3 weeks, depending on complexity. Our goal now is to cut this time even further with CoWare's help.''

ST first engaged with CoWare on a pilot project in 1998 to validate the complete architecture of a next-generation wireless phone. CoWare's software then was adopted by a number of other design teams within ST. During the next two years, the two companies worked closely together to significantly cut system design time for mobile phones, printers, digital video, ADSL, hard disk drives, digital cameras and set-top boxes.

Under this partnership, ST will use CoWare N2C software as the delivery vehicle for platform-based design both within the company and with its partners. By developing a basic platform for a generation of cellular phones using CoWare N2C software, for example, ST has significantly cut time to market for derivative cell phone designs as new features are added over time. ST can effectively leverage its large IP library by re-using key elements in these platforms.

``Our processor cores, our application specific IPs and our VSIA-compliant STBus are all modeled under CoWare. ST and its customers are now able to validate their system on the ST application platforms such as a set-top box or wireless phone. With CoWare tools and ST design methodology, our customers can meet the challenging time-to-market requirements of the digital consumer boom,'' said Philippe Geyres, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Consumer and Microcontroller Group of ST.

In addition, ST and CoWare will work closely together to enhance CoWare's system-level hardware/software co-design and co-verification software based on the intense time-to-market demands faced by the engineers at STMicroelectronics. Because ST employs a number of point tools to perform tasks such as hardware emulation, computational modeling, and data flow algorithm design, CoWare will refine the interfaces so that output from these point tools can be easily and efficiently used in the CoWare N2C system-level design environment. CoWare N2C will form the backbone of ST's system-level design flow.

``STMicroelectronics has been one of our most valuable and demanding customers,'' stated Guido Arnout, President and CEO of CoWare. ``As a world leader in integrating extremely complex systems onto chips for consumer, computer and communications applications, they quickly saw the potential and embraced our technology. Working with ST has allowed us to demonstrate our platform-based design methodology and extend our interface synthesis capabilities beyond a single chip to an entire system-level platform.''

About STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics (formerly SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics) is a global, independent semiconductor company, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on the ParisBourse and on the Milan Stock Exchange. The Company designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems. In 1999, the Company's net revenues were $5.056 billion and net earnings were $547 million. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.

About CoWare

CoWare, Inc. was founded in 1996 to develop tools and methodologies that help engineering teams cut their system-on-a-chip design times in half. CoWare N2C(TM) provides an efficient means to capture, analyze, and implement a system specification, with parallel development by hardware and software teams. In addition, CoWare N2C greatly enhances IP re-use and selection, further reducing design time. The CoWare N2C software is employed by major systems and semiconductor companies including Alcatel, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Sony and STMicroelectronics. CoWare is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. USA. For more information, visit www.CoWare.com.

NOTE: CoWare and CoWare N2C are trademarks of CoWare, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.