Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, Inc. Announces License Agreement and General Availability for PCI Express* IP

INTEL DEVELOPERS FORUM, San Jose, Calif., Feb. 19, 2003 – Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, Inc. (cascadeip.com), a leading supplier of intellectual property for the PCI Express market, today announced that it has completed a licensing agreement with its lead ASIC customer for Cascade's CascadeXpress™ PCI-Express Port Logic IP.

The company has licensed Cascade's CX-PL Port Logic ASIC core implementing the full PCI Express port including the PHY, Data Link, and Transaction Layer logic functions.  Cascade's scalable solution allows for multiple configurations including x1, x2, x4, x8 and x16 2.5Gbps lane ASIC/SOC or FPGA implementations. 

The CascadeXpress™ CX-PL Port Logic core provides developers with a complete PCI Express port logic implementation compliant to the PCI Express 1.0 base specification.  Cascade's team has developed an architecture to meet the demands of deep sub-micron ASIC and SOC design constraints.  Unique partitioning of the core architecture allows users to customize application specific requirements into the application logic and configuration space implementations without impacting the compliance aspects of the core.

"Cascade is excited to make our Port Logic technology generally available to silicon, hardware and platform providers in the PCI Express market.  Our customer's products are positioned to take full advantage of the CX-PL's efficient, high-performance implementation, and we see this is as a strong endorsement of the value-add of our PCI Express core," said Jing-fan Zhang, President of Cascade.

"Intel is very excited about the opportunities for companies like Cascade to provide critical building blocks to the PCI Express market," said Jason Ziller, technology manager with Intel's Corporate Technology Group.  "IP offerings such as Cascade's Port Logic core help enable silicon providers and IHV's to meet their time-to-market objectives and to take advantage of the benefits of the PCI Express architecture."

Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, Inc. is a Beaverton, Oregon based privately held company developing IP cores and highly integrated SOC-IP products for the PCI Express market.  Launched in 2001 by a group of experienced industry veterans, Cascade has quickly moved into a leadership position in the PCI Express IP space with our scalable, multi-lane capable PCI Express Port Logic IP (CX-PL).

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