VSIA Board Elects Freescale's Kathy Werner as New President

New members welcomed:  Beijing Sanda Development Center, CAST, Inc.,  HDL Design House and Mitre Corp.

Wakefield, MA. – April 25, 2006 – The VSI Alliance (VSIA), the leading Semiconductor IP standards organization, today announced that its Board of Directors unanimously elected Freescale Semiconductor’s Kathy Werner as VSIA President.

Werner takes the helm as VSIA president following the departure of Michael Kaskowitz who had led the organization since his appointment in February 2003 through a successful restructure and refocus on IP reuse issues. In addition to Werner’s role at Freescale, she has been a member of VSIA for more than six years working on several technical issues.  Her most notable success is as the Chairperson of the IP Quality working group overseeing the public release of the VSIA QIP (Quality IP) Metric. The QIP Metric covering soft IP has been VSIA’s most successful standard to date, with more than 450 downloads by unique users in less than three months.  The Fabless Semiconductor Association is working together with the VSIA to create the Hard IP (HIP) metric addition to the Quality Metric.  The HIP will be completed later this year.  The IP Quality Pillar is currently seeking new members to work on “verification” and “software” additions to the Metric.

“VSIA is well known for its leadership role in creating IP standards that protect the value of IP as it moves through the ecosystem,” said Kathy Werner, President, VSIA. “It is an honor to lead this group following a successful reorganization led by Mike Kaskowitz, previous VSIA president. Mike has done a great job for the past two years in helping the organization re-focus on critical issue of quality, protection and packaging and he has also helped create a strong Board.  My goal is to work closely with our members, our recently elected CTO, Gary Delp and the Board and staff to deliver valuable work that will make IP more efficient.”

“Complex SoCs developed for multi-application products require effective integration and reuse of IP cores in order to cut development costs and time to market. The VSI Alliance has demonstrated leadership in IP efficiency with the creation of more than 20 standards and documents including the well-adopted QIP Metric,” said Michael Kaskowitz, previous VSIA president and industry consultant.  “Kathy is well suited to the role of the VSIA president, bringing her many years of experience in IP at both Mentor Graphics and Freescale Semiconductor and through her role as Chairperson of the IP Quality Pillar that recently introduced the most well-adopted and most important IP standard:  The Quality IP Metric.”

In addition to the appointment of Kathy Werner as president, VSIA is pleased to announce that it has recently added CAST, Inc., Beijing Sanda Development Center, HDL Design House and Mitre Corp. to its membership roster. Additionally, VSIA also recently announced an agreement with the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) to develop the first VSIA China SIG. For more information on the VSIA and the Pillars, go to www.vsi.org

About VSIA

The VSI Alliance (VSIA) is an open, international organization that includes representatives from all segments of the SoC industry: System houses, Semiconductor vendors, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies, and Intellectual Property (IP) providers. VSIA’s mission is to dramatically enhance the productivity of the SoC design community by providing leading edge commercial and technical solutions and insight into the development, integration and reuse of IP. VSIA has wide industry participation from companies around the world. Membership is open to any company with an interest in the development and promotion of business solutions and open standards used in the design of System-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org