NXP and CoWare Establish Strategic Relationship for the Company Wide Deployment of ESL Technologies

Relationship will provide significant time-to-market benefits to NXP and its customers

Relationship will accelerate NXP leadership in system design and the application of ESL and virtual platform technologies

Engagement includes major licensing and services agreement

SAN JOSE, California/USA – April 7, 2008 – CoWare®, Inc., the leading supplier of platform-driven electronic system-level (ESL) design software and services, announced today that it has established a new strategic relationship with NXP to deploy ESL technologies. The strategic, multi-year relationship covers a broad spectrum of ESL technologies from CoWare as well as a major services agreement to support the rapid deployment of these technologies across NXP's business units. The relationship will provide significant time-to-market benefits to NXP and its customers, and accelerate NXP leadership in system design and the application of ESL and virtual platform technologies.

"NXP is a world leader in developing advanced digital products - from mobile phones, portable media players, TVs and set-top boxes, to identification applications, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices," said Rene Penning de Vries, senior vice president and chief technology officer, NXP Semiconductors. "We have used ESL technologies inside NXP for years and have seen clear benefits. We determined now is the time to standardize on a commercial solution. The strategic agreement between NXP and CoWare underscores the shared vision that the deployment of ESL 2.0 technologies will enable NXP to focus on innovation and deliver better products faster."

"The agreement with NXP demonstrates the rapid transition of ESL technologies from early adopter to widespread production users including architect, hardware and software teams," stated Alan Naumann, CoWare's president and CEO. “We look forward to working closely with NXP as it deploys our solutions throughout their organization for the development of products ranging from automotive and home electronics to high-end cellular system solutions."

After several successful pilot projects in 2007, NXP has begun the rapid rollout and deployment of CoWare ESL 2.0 solutions. These solutions support processor design, platform architecture design and verification, software development and DSP algorithm design and are supported by key CoWare technologies including high speed SystemC modeling, processor modeling, productivity oriented debugging and analysis capabilities. NXP will integrate CoWare solutions in their design flows and methods as well as deploy them in the NXP business units including:

• Home business unit for the design of the next-generation set-top box and digital TV platforms.
• Mobile and personal business unit for the design of 3G and 4G platforms, baseband and multimedia, and wireless USB platforms.
• Automotive and identification business unit for the design of car infotainment platforms.

In addition, CoWare and NXP are working together to jointly evolve and promote the use of standards for modeling languages and methodologies including SystemC and Transaction Level Modeling (TLM).

About CoWare
CoWare is the leading global supplier of platform-driven electronic system-level (ESL) design software and services. IP, semiconductor, and electronics companies use CoWare ESL 2.0 solutions to design better processor- and software-intensive products faster. CoWare solutions solve the new design challenges associated with platform architecture design, platform verification, application sub-system design, processor design, DSP algorithm design, and software development, and are based on open industry standards including SystemC. These solutions also enable IP and semiconductor companies to implement more effective go-to-market strategies. CoWare's corporate investors include ARM [(LSE: ARM); (NASDAQ: ARMHY)], Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS), STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE). CoWare is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices around the world. For more information about CoWare and its products and services, visit http://www.coware.com.