ARM And Cadence Establish New Five-Year Agreement Targeting Design Chain Optimization

Further collaboration to accelerate mutual customers' Design-to-Volume, built on previous success of more than 30 ARM Core-Based SoCs

SAN JOSE, CA., AND CAMBRIDGE, UK - Mar. 4, 2003 – Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CDN), and ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMHY)], the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC processor solutions, today announced at DATE, Munich, a new five-year agreement targeting design chain optimization for their mutual customers. With this agreement, ARM is providing direct access to ARM IP in order to facilitate optimization of Cadence® design and verification solutions on ARM® core-based SoCs.

The cooperation between ARM and Cadence will enable customers to incorporate different ARM cores into the newly announced Cadence Incisive™ verification solution for high-speed verification. As a result, customers will be able to build systems with verified, reusable hardware and software IP blocks faster and with greater confidence that the systems will be manufacturable the first time.

"In today's SoC design environment, reusable IP and design tools need to work 'hand-in-glove' in order to create a design consistency and repeatability in as short a time as possible. It is no longer possible to get premium performance from the latest IP without working with the EDA vendors simultaneously," said Mike Inglis, executive vice president of marketing at ARM. "This new agreement will enable Cadence to leverage access to our IP for the benefit of our mutual customers, enabling a better SoC design experience."

This agreement builds on the companies' existing cooperation on verification, verification acceleration/emulation, signal integrity and design services. Cadence was the first member of ATAP™, the ARM technology access program, and has delivered more than 30 successful tape-outs of ARM Powered® designs through its Design Foundry services business. The two companies are currently working on improving design chain interoperability via standardized models and validation suites for the ARM AMBA™ bus using the SystemC modeling language.

"STEPMIND designs and delivers some of the most innovative systems on the market today for GSM/GPRS/EDGE like the GSM/GPRS/EDGE baseband processor and Four-band GSM RF transceiver. Our design-to-volume will benefit immensely from this alliance," said Alain Jolivet, chairman of STEPMIND. "The combination of pre-verified ARM IP and Cadence software will reduce the risks and turnaround time for our customers and provide us with the comprehensive, best-in-class SoC design and verification solutions we need."

Planned deliverables of this collaboration include Cadence Incisive verification tools combined with the ARM Integrator™ Logic Tile products for acceleration/emulation and Cadence signal integrity solutions combined with ARM signal integrity libraries for specific foundries. The results will benefit systems designers such as architects, hardware verification engineers and software developers, fabless designers and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs).

"ARM is one of the pre-eminent suppliers of IP cores for a significant proportion of Atmel's system-on-chip products," said Michel Guellec, IP integration manager at Atmel "The agreement between ARM and Cadence gives us confidence in continuing to be able to supply right-first-time silicon as we move into nanoscale technology."

"We are enthusiastic about the growing collaboration between ARM and Cadence. We are committed to optimizing the industry design chain to accelerate our customers' design-to-volume," said Penny Herscher, chief marketing officer at Cadence. "This agreement will enable our customers to take full advantage of our advanced technology when designing with ARM IP."

About ARM
ARM is the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC microprocessor solutions. The company licenses its high-performance, low-cost, power-efficient RISC processors, peripherals, and system-chip designs to leading international electronics companies. ARM also provides comprehensive support required in developing a complete system. ARM's microprocessor cores are rapidly becoming a volume RISC standard in such markets as portable communications, hand-held computing, multimedia digital consumer and embedded solutions. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com

About Cadence
Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design technologies, methodology services, and design services. Cadence solutions are used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronics-based products. With approximately 5,300 employees and 2002 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services are available at www.cadence.com.

Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks and Incisive is a trademark of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

ARM and ARM Powered are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. ATAP, AMBA and Integrator are trademarks of ARM Limited. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and Nasdaq: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; ARM France SAS; and ARM Consulting (Shanghai) Co.Ltd.