Artisan Components Changes The Rules; First To Offer Free Libraries To IP Developers

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Released December 13, 1999

Artisan Components Changes The Rules; First To Offer Free Libraries To IP Developers

Artisan New IPNet Partner Program Simplifies IP Integration and Shortens Design Cycles

SUNNYVALE, Calif., - December 13, 1999 - Artisan Components Inc., the physical IP component leader, today announced it has changed the rules of IP integration by forming the industry's first program to provide free libraries to IP developers. By joining Artisan's IPNet Partner Program, IP Developers can use the company's physical libraries as the foundation for their own product development making it easy to create optimal IP products for production with 0.25- and 0.18-micron processes at TSMC, UMC Group and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing. The resulting IP products will integrate easily with customers' Artisan-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. With hundreds of fabless IC companies standardizing on Artisan's physical libraries, the IPNet Partner Program will solve many of the semiconductor industry's difficulties with IP transportability and re-use.

The goal of the program is to reduce the design time for IP based integrated circuits. By using a common physical library for all of the component parts of an integrated circuit, the physical integration, modeling and analysis of the complete design are all greatly simplified. This simplification leads to shorter design cycles with solid, predictable results. This is in stark contrast to today's situation where each component of IP used in a design has been developed with a different base library, causing inconsistencies in functional and delay modeling as well as physical incompatibilities. These are all issues that can lead to a high probability of silicon failure.

"Designers are demanding that IP vendors provide more consistent, easier to integrate deliveries," comments Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Artisan Components. "We have seen how smooth it is to integrate IP if it uses the same library as the rest of the chip and we believe that the IPNet program will go a long way towards simplifying IP core delivery and use. As the provider of the industry's most widely used physical libraries, Artisan is in a unique position to really help solve this problem."

Brian Knowles, vice president of marketing for MIPS Technologies said, "MIPS has built its leadership position by empowering SoC designers with the industry's best microprocessor core solutions. Artisan has built a leadership position in physical libraries and I believe the partnership with Artisan will provide our customers with immediate benefits. Ease-of-use and ease-of-integration are some of the key requirements our customers demand and this collaboration will help us meet these qualifying factors." Dr. David Chang, senior director of VoIP engineering at Lara Technology said, "As a leading provider of Voice-over-IP switching systems, we have to work quickly to keep up with the demands of the converging networking and telecommunications markets. Artisan's complete library solutions made it easy for us to integrate multiple MIPS-basedï processor cores into our SoC designs. Using Artisan's high-quality products and MIPS high-performance and scalable processor cores certainly assists Lara in its advancement of Voice-over-IP SoC solutions.

Noted Bernie Rosenthal, vice president of marketing and business development for Tensilica, "We deliver the industry's most sophisticated and easy-to-use environment for creating configurable, extensible microprocessors. Key to our ability to do this is the tight integration of our IP with the physical libraries. Being an IPNet program member allows us to streamline the design flow for our customers using Artisan libraries."

The 21 IPNet charter members include Advancel Logic Corporation; ATMOS Corporation; Aurora VLSI, Inc.; BOPS, Inc.; Genesys Testware, Inc.; Infinite Technology Corporation (ITC); Innovative Semiconductors; Integrated Silicon Systems, Ltd.(ISS); Lexra, Inc.; Mentor Graphics Corporation; MIPS Technologies, Inc.; Morphics Technology, Inc.; Palmchip Corporation; picoTurbo, Inc.; QuArc, Inc.; Sonics, Inc.; SOTA Design Technology, Inc.; Stellar Semiconductor, Inc.; Tensilica, Inc.; Videon, Inc.; and Xentec, Inc.

Fast-Growing EDANet[tm] and ServiceNet[tm] Compliment IPNet Partner Program

IPNet joins Artisan's very successful EDANet and ServiceNet partner programs that were launched in March of 1999. The program memberships, that have more than doubled in the last nine months, consist of 53 additional leading tool and design services providers including Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics. ServiceNet and EDANet share the same goal as IPNet in helping customers move their designs quickly and successfully to target pure-play foundries.

As design complexities increase it will become more important to have the right tools and design service support in place. The program addresses these requirements by providing a wide variety of enhanced design service and extensive tool support to streamline the design process for its library users. Jeff Lewis, vice president of market and business development at Artisan Components says the partner programs represent the industry's most comprehensive partner network for the SoC design community with 74 companies actively participating today. With the addition of the IPNet program, Artisan provides a valuable, one-stop resource for its rapidly growing customer base of over 400 companies.

More information about Artisan's partner programs and a complete listing of members may be obtained from the company's website at http://www.artisan.com.

About Artisan Components

Founded in 1991, Artisan Components, Inc., (Nasdaq:ARTI) provides high-quality silicon intellectual property (IP) to the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers. The company's Process-Perfect[tm] products, including embedded memories, standard cells and I/Os, are tuned to each manufacturer's process. Semiconductor manufacturers, in turn, provide these products to their design customers so that they may achieve the full speed, density and low power potential of the semiconductor process. Artisan's library products are designed to work with the most popular EDA tools in the industry including Avant!, Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics.

Artisan Components is headquartered at 1195 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1201; phone (408) 734-5600; fax (408) 734-5050; Web address: http://www.artisan.com.

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