Toshiba adopts SonicsMX for next generation handheld chips

Complex SoC Design Accelerates Demand for Sonics SMART Interconnects

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., - February 1, 2005 - Sonics Inc.® the premier supplier of system-on-chip (SoC) SMART Interconnects™, today announced that Toshiba Corp. (TOSBF) will design the SonicsMX™ and Sonics3220™ SMART Interconnects into its family of wireless handheld products. Toshiba currently uses Sonics’ Silicon Backplane™ SMART Interconnect and Sonics MemMax® Memory Scheduler in its processor-based digital consumer products. This announcement marks Toshiba’s endorsement of the entire Sonics product offering for deployment into its SoCs for wireless and digital consumer applications.

Mainstream SoC development has now reached such a high degree of complexity that the critical step in new SoC development is the design of ultra-complex data flow “internal interconnects” that can service the multitude of intellectual property cores required by multifunction products, and complete that design in an ever-shortening delivery time-to-market window. The massive complexity of these internal interconnects is fueling an accelerated adoption rate for Sonics’ SMART Interconnects, as trend-setting SoC developers look to third-party solutions to deliver higher design predictability and increased engineering efficiencies.

“Leveraging pre-designed and pre-verified internal interconnects is a big part of our overall SoC development strategy and Sonics adds strategic value in this regard,” said Takashi Yoshimori, Technology Executive, SoC-Design of Toshiba’s Semiconductor Company. “We had confidence in Sonics given the significant benefits we have already realized using the company’s other products. The decision to use SonicsMX was based on its unparalleled feature sets when compared to other interconnects we investigated. MemMax was selected to enable us to use conventional DRAM controller designs while increasing the data throughput so we can maintain high utilization of Sonics Interconnect IP.”

SonicsMX offers SoC developers the flexibility to build custom or “hybrid” crossbar shared-link topologies in a configurable manner so SoC developers can marry latency dependent data communications and throughput dependent digital multimedia streaming on the same chip. Other advanced SonicsMX features, such as power management, security, and quality of service management, further ease the burden of interconnect development and are only found in SonicsMX. Common tightly-coupled bus architectures don’t support hybrid topologies, or similar advanced features contained in SoncisMX, resulting in a higher design burden on the SoC developer.

Today’s announcement represents another public endorsement of SonicsMX from a world-class semiconductor company and comes quickly after the product’s launch last October. According to Grant Pierce, Sonics president and CEO, “SonicsMX establishes a new revenue stream for our company that adds to the revenue streams we enjoy from existing SMART Interconnect products. SonicsMX also expands our served market to include the highly valued wireless handheld segment which is a great complement to our established presence in the digital consumer segments. These are significant accomplishments, as we continue our transition to an emerging growth company, and I am very pleased that our partnership with Toshiba has contributed to our corporate goal.”

About Sonics
Sonics, Inc. is a leading provider of SMART Interconnects that deliver high SoC design predictability and increased design efficiency. Major semiconductor and systems companies including Broadcom, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba have applied Sonics SMART Interconnects in leading products in the wireless, digital multimedia and communications markets. Sonics is a privately held company funded by Investar Capital, Smart Technology Ventures, TL Ventures, Easton Hunt Capital, JAFCO Ventures, and H&Q Asia-Pacific. For more information, see www.sonicsinc.com

Sonics SMART Interconnects, SonicsMX, Sonics3220, SiliconBackplane, and MemMax are trademarks of Sonics, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.