Improv Systems Names Industry Veteran Victor Berman as New CEO

Configurable DSP Pioneer Taps Extensive EDA, IP Experience to Lead Company in New Growth Phase

BEVERLY, Mass.-- January 17, 2007 -- Improv Systems, a pioneer in the development of configurable DSP solutions, today announced that Victor Berman has been appointed president and CEO, replacing company founder Cary Ussery, who will remain a director on the company’s board. Berman brings more than 30 years of global experience in the semiconductor, EDA and IP industries. He takes the reins of the company as it begins a new phase of growth and expansion, targeting high-growth applications such as mobile media and digital TV and new geographic markets with its unique processing technology and accompanying tool suite.

The appointment marks a return to Improv for Berman, who worked with the company from 2001 to 2004 as vice president of sales and marketing. Since then, he has been at Cadence Design Systems where he was responsible for language standards and strategy for the EDA market leader. Over the past several years, he has played a prominent role as an industry driver promoting standards based design flows. He was on the Board of The SPIRIT Consortium and heavily involved in the development of the SystemVerilog standard. He is also the Chairman of the SystemC IEEE Working Group.

“We welcome Victor back to Improv and are confident the experience and contacts he has developed since his first tenure here will be invaluable as we expand our strategy and focus on many exciting new growth opportunities for the company,” said Ussery. “His in-depth knowledge and influence in standard-based design flows, and how they relate to application-specific development methodologies, will be a cornerstone of Improv’s strategy to enable high-performance, low-power SoC design for our customers.”

Berman brings a strong background in engineering, management and strategic marketing. He is well known in the EDA and electronics industry for his leadership in the development and proliferation of standards. This experience required understanding and resolution of the issues faced in utilizing third party IP in the SOC design and verification flow, including addressing emerging needs such as low power design for today’s consumer electronics. His skills in coalition building to support standards in the design chain will be a significant asset given Improv's focus on providing standards-based tools and development flows.

“I have always recognized the huge opportunity for Improv’s core technology and this is an exciting time to be applying it to key market segments in the consumer and communications industries. The Improv offering – the underlying IP cores, plus an integrated design environment and essential software support – fits well with the type of experience and knowledge I have. With the team they have in place and the customer engagements already in the works, I am confident we can deliver on the great potential here.”

Berman’s formal training was in language design and electrical engineering in the interdisciplinary Computer Science graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University. This training was put to good use when he headed the team that developed the VHDL language and the first suite of tools to support it. Since then, he has managed large development teams including the Verilog-XL team at Cadence.

Improv offers a complete suite of applications and solutions based around its popular Jazz™ DSP core, a highly configurable, multiprocessor architecture that is well suited for today’s demanding consumer, multimedia and mobile communications applications. Rather than a fixed processor and instruction set, the Jazz DSP is used to create designer-defined DSP cores - Jazz DSPs that are customized by the designer for their specific product or application domain. The Jazz DSP, also available in pre-configured options, is a very long instruction word (VLIW) architecture that provides high performance through parallel execution of operations.

About Improv Systems, Inc.

Improv Systems, Inc. develops and licenses the Jazz PSA™ platforms featuring the Jazz DSP and application solution kits for Voice-over-IP, Networking and Multi-Media. Improv’s Jazz DSP is a configurable DSP that allows designers to create optimized DSP cores targeted to consumer electronics and telecommunications markets. For more information, please visit www.improvsys.com.

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