Artisan IP Selected by Sandburst for Advanced HIBEAM Chipset; Silicon-Proven IP and Ease of Use Enabled Sandburst's First-Pass Silicon

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 2004 -- Artisan Components, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARTI), a leading provider of physical intellectual property (IP), and Sandburst(R) Corporation, a provider of adaptive silicon for advanced packet systems, today announced that Artisan's analog and digital IP was selected by Sandburst for use in its latest HIBEAM(R) Packet Switching Chipset. This innovative solution is a high capacity, non-blocking switch fabric chipset optimized for supporting the industry's highest levels of Ethernet and IP switching.

In their product development, Sandburst moved from an ASIC environment to customer owned tooling (COT) environment where IP integration and speed were critical issues for their design's success. Sandburst's BME-3200/SE-4000 chip design required integration of large amounts of high-speed memories running at many different frequencies. Additionally, Sandburst's design required increased throughput and performance coupled with a unique mixed-mode of operation whereby a single device can support both arbitration and switching. The mixed mode functionality enables Sandburst's OEM customers to leverage the BME-3200 to support a single-chip 80 Gbps switch fabric solution.

The BME-3200/SE-4000 provides the crossbar functionality and QoS arbitration required by packet switching systems. SE-4000-based fabric cards require half the space and consume half the power of the first generation SE-1600. The SE-4000 scales linearly with bandwidth requirements supporting packet fabrics ranging from 40 Gbps to 1.28 Tbps, which allows system designers to maximize efficiency while using the minimum number of devices.

Sandburst selected Artisan's high-speed DDR PHY solution consisting of PLLs, DLLs and DDR I/Os and HSTL and LVDS high-speed I/Os optimized for TSMC's 0.13-micron process for its HIBEAM chipset. Additionally, Sandburst used Artisan's single-port memory generators and register files and its SAGE(TM)-X and SAGE(TM)-HS Standard Cell Libraries in the chipset design.

"The fact that Sandburst was able to achieve first-pass success on a chip of this performance level and scope is a testament to the strength of their design expertise and methodology," said Callan Carpenter, vice president and general manager of Artisan's Analog/Mixed Signal Business Unit. "Given the inherent complexity of the SE-4000 project, our job was to reduce risk factors wherever possible. As a broad-line supplier of IP that is both silicon-proven and mutually compatible, Artisan is leveraging Sandburst's industry-leading solution to provide a robust foundation of components that customers rely upon to build such impressive designs."

"Artisan's IP integrated into our complex design reduced development time and helped us to successfully meet our time-to-market goals," said Karen Schramm, Vice President of Engineering at Sandburst.

Sandburst's chipset accelerates the delivery of high performance packet switching equipment. By utilizing readily available packet forwarding, traffic management, and fabric components, developers can focus their critical resources on differentiating features such as protocol software, network systems knowledge and management functions.

About Sandburst

Sandburst(R) is a fabless semiconductor company delivering adaptive silicon to power advanced Ethernet and IP switches. Sandburst's HiBeam(R) chipset provides its system vendor clients with a complete packet switching data path for Enterprise and Service Provider applications. A privately held company, Sandburst is financed by leading venture capital investors. Sandburst services the worldwide networking market from its headquarters in Andover, Massachusetts. For more information, see http://www.sandburst.com.

About Artisan Components

Artisan Components, Inc. is a leading provider of physical intellectual property (IP) components for the design and manufacture of complex system-on-a-chip integrated circuits. Artisan's products include embedded memory, standard cell, input/output, analog and mixed-signal components, which are designed to achieve the best combination of performance, density, power and yield. Artisan has licensed its IP components to over 2,000 companies involved in integrated circuit design. Artisan is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. More information about Artisan Components, including free library access, can be found at www.artisan.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the impact of Artisan products on speed of design implementation and compatibility and statements regarding the performance and benefits of Sandburst's products and technology. These statements are subject to various risk factors including, without limitation, unforeseen compatibility issues, technical difficulties in design, integration or operation, continued demand, market acceptance and competition. We refer you also to the documents that Artisan files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in particular the section entitled "Factors Affecting Future Operating Results" in Artisan's annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q.

Artisan Components and Artisan are registered trademarks of Artisan Components, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.