Virtio Corporation announces formal Company rollout

VIRTIO CORPORATION ANNOUNCES FORMAL COMPANY ROLLOUT

Company introduces web-based virtual prototyping platform

CAMPBELL, CALIF., JULY 24, 2000---Virtio Corp., the creator of an Internet virtual prototyping platform, today announced its formal launch to the industry and the introduction of its web site for on-line virtual prototyping of embedded systems and System-On-Chip (SOC) products. Virtual prototyping allows designers to create a fast prototype of a complete system in soft form - without using physical hardware. The technology is powerful enough to model complex embedded systems and fast enough to execute production-quality software very early in the design cycle.

MIPS Technologies, Inc., of Mountain View, California, (NASDAQ:MIPS, MIPSB) is an early participant in working with Virtio to deliver the virtual prototyping capability to the market. Brian Knowles, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies stated, "Virtual prototyping will enable our customers to evaluate pre-made models and configure custom platforms from the convenience of their browser. Working together, Virtio and MIPS Technologies modeled the Atlas development board in 3 weeks and we were very pleased with the performance and functionality of the Virtio prototyping approach." The speed of the Virtio solution was such that the development team was able to boot embedded Linux in less than three minutes. Shay Ben-Chorin, Virtio president and CEO stated, "We are very excited to announce the formal rollout of Virtio and our web site for virtual prototyping. We believe that there are several critical, interrelated issues facing the industry right now that we are uniquely addressing. The first issue centers on trying to design products utilizing IP from multiple vendors. The second issue revolves around the ability to concurrently develop hardware and software to reduce the overall design cycle time. The third issue focuses on the need for a central location that supplies information on HW and SW IP for a particular end-product application." "Further, these issues are comprised of both technical and business dynamics that impact product development and deployment success," Ben-Chorin continued. "For instance, time-to-market requirements have traditionally been addressed from the standpoint of shortening the product development design cycle ignoring the time-to-decision element - the time it takes to evaluate different implementation alternatives. We enable embedded systems and SOC designers to make design trade-off decisions early in the design cycle whereby they can develop virtual prototypes of their products to determine which components will best suit their particular product implementations."

Web-Based Virtual Prototyping
Effective immediately, the company is making available the first iteration of its web-based virtual prototyping capability. When engineers and designers log onto the company's web site (www.virtio.com) they will be able to evaluate pre-configured embedded IP platforms that are available for end-product applications, such as Bluetooth and embedded Linux. These embedded IP platforms consist of high-speed processor models provided by Virtio and other suppliers such as ARM.

The embedded IP platforms available on Virtio's web site also includes peripheral IP components such as memory controllers, interrupt controllers and virtual network controllers. Through Virtio's integrated development environment (Virtio IDE), engineers and product developers can create fast virtual prototypes of their products and run embedded software on the virtual prototypes.

A typical virtual prototype is comprised of the following components:

Fast instruction-accurate processor models connected to standard software development tools that enable the loading and execution of production-quality software on the prototype.
Hardware/peripheral models represented in high-level of abstraction using C/C++-based graphical language.
Test-bench/human-machine interface models similar to the keyboard and LCD of a cellular phone, these models mimic the appearance of and interaction between the user and the system model.

The fully graphical Virtio IDE enables the fast creation of system prototypes in 1-3 weeks rather than months and provides fast execution speeds of millions of instructions per second. Ben-Chorin explained, "Virtual prototyping provides several advantages over traditional hardware prototypes--it is fast, easy-to-use and enables developers to make design-trade-off decisions very early in the design cycle."

Gerard Wolters, Senior Software Engineer, National Semiconductor's site in s'Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, declared, "Virtio's IDE enabled us to design and test all the simulation software for new modules in our latest DECT baseband device, the SC14408, before the hardware implementation was finished. Because we were able to simulate with fully tested software, we realized a significant time savings during the test phase of the hardware implementation."

Today, users can evaluate the pre-configured embedded system IP platforms offered by different vendors in the showroom portion of Virtio's website. Upcoming services will allow users to upload their own embedded software and execute it on the virtual platform. This will enable advanced benchmarking directly from a user's desktop browser. Future Virtio services will also enable platform development over the web, allowing users to modify an existing platform by customizing it for a particular product application.

Use and Availability
Access to Virtio's virtual prototyping showroom is free. Try it at www.virtio.com. More functionality and services will be made available in the upcoming months.

About Virtio
Virtio Corp. created an on-line virtual prototyping platform that shortens embedded systems and SOC (System On Chip) product development time by connecting application-specific design communities and technology vendors over the Internet. The company developed its unique Internet capabilities by leveraging its patent pending technology. Virtio's graphical integrated development environment (Virtio IDE) is used in the early stages of the design cycle for embedded IP evaluation, concurrent software and hardware development and early system integration. Virtio is based in Campbell, California. Additional information about Virtio is available at www.virtio.com.
Virtio is a trademark of Virtio Corp. All other brand or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and should be treated as such.