Avnet ASIC Israel and Aurora VLSI Partner to Offer Expanded ASIC and SoC Solutions

Tel Mond, Israel and Santa Clara, CA, USA - September 24, 2007 - Avnet ASIC Israel (AAI), an ASIC and COT design, backend, and turnkey manufacturing services provider, and Aurora VLSI, a silicon IP core and front end design/verification services provider, have teamed up to enhance each other’s offerings to the System-on-Chip (SoC) market. This new cooperation also enables both partners to expand their services and products into new markets, bridging the geographical and time zone distances through local services in both Israel and California.

AAI is a premier provider of ASIC, structured ASIC, COT, and FPGA design services. This includes front end design, place and route and other physical design and verification services resulting in GDSII tape-outs. After tape-out, AAI offers turnkey manufacturing services through strong relationships with wafer fabs, assembly, and test houses. Additionally, through partnerships with leading IP providers, AAI offers access to proven high quality IPs for inclusion in its customers' chips. The new AAI/Aurora partnership adds close to 100 proven IP cores for communications, memory system, bus system, and other peripherals functions to AAI's technology base. Aurora's front end design expertise is also available where custom logic development is required.

"Our cooperation with Aurora will enable us to provide to our customers, access to state-of-the-art IPs and unique design expertise for custom solutions" said Nadav Ben-Ezer, Managing Director for AAI. "Combining the IP knowledge and logic design capabilities of Aurora and AAI's expertise in Deep Sub-Micron design and implementation of SoC projects will enable our customers to shorten development time and minimize risks while facing the device complexity, cost and performance challenges of today's markets. We also aspire, through this partnership, to tap into the US market with joint projects with Aurora."

Aurora VLSI is an established silicon IP provider and front end design and verification services provider. Their expertise is in complex, high speed digital systems design and verification. This includes ASIC, semi-custom, and full custom design of Ethernet MACs, PCI, Cardbus, USB, IEEE 1394a/b, DMA, memory controllers (SDRAM, SRAM, flash, Compact Flash), bus systems (especially AMBA), graphics, floating point, processors, and other peripherals functions. Now, with the AAI partnership, Aurora can offer also a complete path to GDSII: additional synthesis and timing closure capabilities, formal proof Design for Test, place & route, back-annotated verification and other backend services, and then follow on to manufacturing.

"We are excited about expanding our capabilities to be able to tape-out and deliver parts for our customers that need backend and manufacturing services, in addition to our IP and front end services" according to Joan Pendleton, President of Aurora. "We also look forward to a closer connection with the Israeli market through our partnership with AAI."

About Avnet ASIC Israel

Avnet ASIC Israel (www.avnet-asic.com) is a leading provider of a complete range of design and turnkey manufacturing services for fabless companies and OEMs, which develop advanced SoC devices. AAI's portfolio includes design and manufacturing services for ASIC, COT, Analog, Structured ASIC, and FPGA. In the past 20 years AAI has successfully completed more than 250 tape-outs. Partnering with the world leading library, IP and manufacturing vendors, Avnet ASIC Israel secures to its customers access to the latest technology, flexible pricing, fast deliveries, and top class performance.
AAI is ISO 9001:2000 certified and qualified as an authorized design center by Fujitsu, NXP, Tower, eASIC, MHS, MIPS, ARM, and Cadence.
Active in the semiconductors market since 1986, Avnet ASIC Israel is a subsidiary of Avnet Israel, which is the Israeli branch of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT) - one of the world's largest B2B distributors of the world leading technology manufacturers.

About Aurora VLSI

Aurora VLSI, Inc. (www.auroravlsi.com) was founded in 1998 to develop and market silicon IP cores, subsystems, and SoC platforms. Its portfolio includes close to 100 IP cores that provide communications, systems, peripherals, and processing functions for SoCs. Additionally, Aurora provides services to customize, integrate, and assist customers in any other way in their ASIC/SoC development.
Aurora is a member of the ARM Connected Community, a Design and Reuse Partner, a Chip Estimate Partner, SPARC International member, and Open VERA Catalyst Program member.
Aurora is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA.