ISS BECOMES AMPHION[tm] - RAISES $10 MILLION IN SECOND ROUND FUNDING; NEW NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS JOIN BOARD
Funding accelerates expansion of leading provider of innovative application-specific virtual components for broadband and multimedia communications San Jose, California (January 8, 2001): Amphion Semiconductor, Inc. (previously known as Integrated Silicon Systems), the leading provider of application-specific virtual components for broadband and multimedia communications, announced today that it has received $10 million of new investment from a syndicate led by Apax Partners Funds. The investment will be used to accelerate the expansion of the company's worldwide network of sales, marketing and support offices and build upon its world-class design engineering capabilities. Amphion creates innovative IP cores for semiconductor applications in rapidly growing consumer electronics and communications markets: wireless, broadband, digital video, imaging, VoIP, and G3/UMTS.
J G Doherty, Amphion's CEO commented "The company has progressed rapidly since taking first round finance in February 1999. We have now developed and delivered our standard component business model and have expanded to 50 people worldwide, adding sales and support offices in Tokyo and Boston last quarter. Our international customer base just keeps growing. The new corporate identity is an outward expression of these accomplishments, and underscores our focus on the increasing importance of virtual components in System-on-a-Chip design."
Michael Risman, Director at Apax Partners added, "Amphion has a very strong intellectual property portfolio and design technology founded on years of world-class signal processing research undertaken at The Queen's University of Belfast. Amphion's designs support orders of magnitude improvements in performance compared to conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP processors. The company has built an impressive reputation in a short period of time and we are delighted to be supporting in its next phase of growth."
Over the last 18 months, Amphion has introduced an extensive range of system-level semiconductor IP core solutions - product branded as ASVCs - for real-time multimedia and broadband communications applications. Amphion's ASVC products are designed to be the silicon cornerstones of system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs for advanced convergence products. For example, Amphion's latest CS6650 ASVC is capable of real-time decompression of MPEG-2 video streams widely used in a diverse range of consumer electronics and digital video broadcast products, such as DVD players, set-top boxes, and Multimedia PCs.
Amphion's New Non-Executive Directors
As part of the new financing round, Amphion recently appointed two new non-executive directors. Peter Magowan is Executive VP Sales and Marketing & Director at ARM Holdings plc [LSE: ARM: & Nasdaq: ARMHY] and brings impressive market knowledge and unparalleled experience of the successful implementation of intellectual property (IP) based business models in the semiconductor industry. Silicon Valley veteran Gregorio Reyes brings a wealth of industry knowledge and managerial insight from an extensive career. He is the former CEO & chairman of American Semiconductor Equipment Technologies and Sunward Technologies, and is currently a non-executive director of C-Cube Microsystems [Nasdaq: CUBE], ARC International [LSE: ARK] and a number of private companies. Reyes and Magowan both join the Amphion board in a private capacity unrelated to their other investments or means of employment.
About the Amphion Name
Until year-end 2000, Amphion was known as Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd, or ISS. The change of corporate identity represents the company's commitment to providing innovative signal processing solutions aimed at rapidly growing markets such as wireless, broadband and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP). Over the last 18 months, ISS rapidly rolled out a broad range of application specific virtual components (ASVCs) - the silicon cornerstones of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs for advanced convergence products. The name Amphion is taken from Greek mythology: Amphion, a son of Zeus, built walls around the city of Thebes using his lyre to charm blocks of stone into alignment. Amphion's business is providing speech, video and data processing ASVCs - the key building blocks in System-on-a-Chip designs. Available as off-the-shelf products, ASVCs are a major contributor to speeding the design and development processes for customers implementing applications in SoC, ASIC and FPGA.
About Amphion[tm]
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific virtual components (ASVCs) for multimedia and communications System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuits. Amphion delivers video/image compression, speech/voice coding, and channel coding solutions for consumer and communications applications. Using proprietary techniques for direct-mapped implementations of digital signal processing functions and algorithms in hardware, Amphion develops and licenses IP cores that realize 10X to 1000X improvements in performance compared to conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP processors. Amphion is a privately-held company with corporate headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing operations in San Jose, California. For more information, visit the Amphion website at http://www.Amphion.com
About Apax Partners
Apax Partners is one of the worlds leading private equity investment groups. Founded in 1972 in the United States and in Europe, Apax Partners currently has over $7 billion under management or advice on behalf of leading institutional investors around the world. Apax Partners pursues a balanced equity portfolio strategy, investing in growth companies at all stages of development from start-up to buyout in its chosen sectors, namely: information technology, telecommunications, healthcare, media, internet, financial services and retail and consumer products. Some of Apax Partners Funds recent technology and telecomunications investments include Autonomy Corporation; Esprit Telecom; Dialog Semiconductor; ARC International; Jazztel and Eyretel. The group has investments in over 330 companies worldwide. For further information on Apax Partners please contact Siobhan Loftus, Director of Marketing, telephone: +44 (0)20 7872 6495
Notes to Editors:
Amphion, The Amphion logo, "Virtual Components for the Converging World", "Innovation by Amphion", "The Multimedia ASVC Company", Optima and Celerity are trademarks of Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. All other brand names or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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