Fulcrum Microsystems Announces License Agreement With PMC-Sierra For Crossbar Switch Technology

CALABASAS HILLS, CA. – Dec. 15, 2003 – Fulcrum Microsystems and PMC-Sierra, Inc. (NASDAQ: PMCS) today announced a technology agreement that allows PMC-Sierra (TM) to license Fulcrum’s Nexus crossbar switch technology for on-chip interconnect applications.

Nexus provides a high-speed interconnect for efficiently constructing large-scale System-on-Chip architectures. It replaces bus-based interconnects, allowing chip designers as much as 100 Gbps of low-latency bandwidth between multiple logic or processing blocks, and features native clock domain bridging.

“Nexus frees designers from limitations imposed by bus-based interconnects, allowing them to design much higher performance chips that easily integrate IP blocks, each operating at different clock rates,” said Robert Nunn, president and CEO of Fulcrum Microsystems. “PMC-Sierra’s focus on communications is an excellent fit for Nexus and we are committed to working with them to make this partnership a success.”

“Our customers are always looking for more performance from our products and we have recognized that a crossbar interconnect gives us the kind of throughput we need to meet their needs,” said Greg Aasen, chief operating officer and chief technology officer at PMC-Sierra. “Nexus offers us high performance with the added advantage of lower average power consumption.”

Nexus Crossbar Switch
Nexus is a terabit crossbar switch technology that offers very low switching and arbitration latency. Based on Fulcrum’s asynchronous IC design technology, Nexus naturally bridges multiple clock domains and provides instantaneous flow control.

One of the key benefits of Fulcrum’s asynchronous design style is the equivalent of perfect clock gating in which power is consumed only on activity, on a circuit-by-circuit basis. As a result, Nexus is very power efficient, consuming power linearly with activity.

About Fulcrum Microsystems
Founded in 2000, Fulcrum Microsystems Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company. Building on research from California Institute of Technology, Fulcrum is developing a series of standards-based chips leveraging its patented high-performance, low-power “asynchronous” semiconductor design methodology. More information can be found at www.fulcrummicro.com.

About PMC-Sierra
PMC-Sierra (TM) is a leading provider of high speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors and MIPS-based microprocessors for Enterprise, Access, Metro Optical Transport, Storage Area Networking and Wireless network equipment. The company offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information, visit www.pmc-sierra.com.