NEC Electronics Expands Instant Silicon Solution Platform Offering

-Company Adds 3.125 Gbps SerDes Core and High-Speed Interfaces,Increases Platform Densities-

KAWASAKI, Japan, SANTA CLARA, Calif. and DUESSELDORF, Germany, March 10, 2003 - NEC Electronics Corporation and its subsidiaries in the United States and Europe, NEC Electronics America, Inc. and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, today announced significant expansion of their Instant Silicon Solution PlatformTM (ISSPTM) offering. The 0.15-micron (UX4) ISSP family now includes two new base arrays offering up to 1.5 million usable gates and 3.7 megabits (Mb) of embedded configurable memory, while the addition of a high-performance 3.125 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) serializer/deserializer (SerDes) core that supports high-speed interfaces including XAUI, InfiniBand®, PCI ExpressTM, Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel makes the platform suitable for high-end computing and networking applications. NEC Electronics also announced today details of a comprehensive design methodology to support ISSP designers with high-productivity, high-performance tools.

In a separate release issued today, NEC Electronics unveiled an agreement with venture fund firm Global Catalyst Partners to help promote ISSPs to companies developing innovative new technologies. NEC Electronics' ISSP architecture combines the benefits of cell-based ASIC design with easily customizable upper layers to meet individual design requirements and produce cost-effective devices with high performance and fast design turnaround times.

"Over the past year, more than 20 customers have leveraged our experience in manufacturing, deep sub-micron design automation and intellectual property integration to develop high-performance, low-cost ISSP silicon for their system designs," said Dr. Hitoshi Yoshizawa, general manager, 3rd Custom LSI Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. "Now, with increased densities, a high-performance SerDes core and support for a broad range of popular high-speed interface standards, our ISSP devices can reduce risks, lower costs and produce faster turnaround times for a wider range of applications."

Handel Jones, president and CEO of International Business Strategies, a market research firm in Los Gatos, Calif., said, "With rising manufacturing costs and shrinking market windows, the electronics industry is ripe for high-performance, low-cost customizable solutions that can be designed and manufactured in short time windows and provide platform-level application solutions. Application-specific design platforms that can incorporate complex intellectual property and support multiple communications interfaces, such as NEC Electronics' ISSP devices, are an important breakthrough for enabling designers to bring new systems to the market within short time windows and take the systems into volume production."

NEC Electronics Expands ISSP Offering
With today's announcement, NEC Electronics expands its standard ISSP lineup, first introduced in March 2002, with two additional high-density base arrays. One new standard ISSP configuration will cover densities up to 1.5 million usable gates, up to 90,000 internal registers and up to 2.5 Mb of embedded configurable memory; the other configuration will support one million usable gates and 3.7 Mb of embedded configurable memory.

To further expand the applications for its ISSP products, NEC Electronics has developed a new ISSP-HSI (high-speed interface) family that incorporates the company's high-performance SerDes core as the key interface component between the ISSP architecture and various industry-standard high-speed interfaces. The flexible SerDes core can be easily configured to support a range of frequencies, including 3.125, 2.5, 1.25 and 1.062 Gbps and 622 megabits per second (Mbps), to meet specific application requirements. The core delivers low power dissipation of 220 milliwatts (mW) on one channel at 3.125 Gbps. The ISSP products themselves offer four or 16 built-in SerDes channel cores that support multi-rate applications. The SerDes core offered with the ISSP platform can be configured to support InfiniBand, PCI Express, XAUI, Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel.

Operating with system clock speeds up to 250 megahertz (MHz), NEC Electronics' ISSP-HSI devices have densities up to one million usable gates, 70,000 internal registers and 2 Mb of embedded configurable memory. An internal supply voltage (V) of 1.5V and interfaces to 2.5V and 3.3V input/output sources (I/Os) ensure a low-power design. The devices also include four embedded analog phase-locked loops (APLLs) and eight to 32 digital locked loops (DLLs).

Advanced EDA Software Delivers Optimized Results for ISSPs
The availability of effective design tools is a key enabler of this easy-to-design silicon platform. Recognizing this requirement, NEC Electronics established a comprehensive ISSP design methodology to enable customers to achieve high-performance results and fast design turnaround times. The design methodology includes both NEC Electronics-proprietary and best-in-class third-party tools.

NEC Electronics collaborated with Synplicity, Inc. to optimize the Synplify ASIC® synthesis software with custom mapping technology designed to support the ISSP architecture, and also to develop a synthesis design flow that is accessible to designers of both field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and ASICs. (Announced by Synplicity on March 5, 2003.) NEC Electronics also worked with Tera Systems, Inc. to develop an ISSP-optimized register transfer level (RTL) rule checking and planning tool that secures timing closure and physical implementation at the RTL design stage. (Announced by Tera Systems on March 10, 2003.)

ISSP designers also have access to NEC Electronics' sophisticated OpenCAD® design framework, which includes physical floorplanning, timing-driven layout, hierarchical design and other leading-edge design technologies. The ISSP architecture also supports hardware/software co-simulation/co-verification on a block-based system design approach.

Further easing the ISSP design process, NEC Electronics engineered the ISSP architecture to facilitate high-fault coverage testing and eliminate the designer's need to perform design for test (DFT) steps. All testing technologies, including SCAN, built-in self-test (BIST), boundary SCAN (BSCAN) and TestBus, are embedded in the base of the architecture. Likewise, the unit module and routing resources are optimized to minimize deep sub-micron issues such as signal integrity, and clock domains are embedded in the base to eliminate clock-skew issues. This unique structure delivers the performance and functionality benefits of an ASIC with the reduced costs and short design times traditionally associated with gate arrays and FPGAs.

Availability
Engineering samples of the two new standard ISSP base arrays and the ISSP-HSI device libraries are expected to be available by mid-2003. A reference design kit, including a hardware board and software development tools, is also expected to be available at that time. Volume production is expected by Q4 2003. NEC Electronics expects turnaround time for customer devices to be 14 business days from design to mass production. Non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs for the ISSP products are expected to be below $100,000. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

About NEC Electronics
NEC Electronics worldwide specializes in semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the high-end computing and broadband networking markets; system solutions for the mobile handsets, PC peripherals, automotive and digital consumer markets; and platform solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics Corporation has 24 subsidiaries worldwide including NEC Electronics America, Inc. (www.necelam.com) and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH (www.ee.nec.de). In addition to marketing, selling and supporting NEC Electronics products to customers in their respective regions, NEC Electronics America and NEC Electronics Europe also operate local manufacturing facilities in Roseville, California, and Ballivor, Ireland, respectively. Additionally, NEC Electronics America is the exclusive North American sales and marketing channel of NEC AM-LCD and PDP modules. Additional information about NEC Electronics worldwide can be found at www.necel.com. NEC Electronics Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l), one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions.

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Instant Silicon Solution Platform, ISSP and NEC Electronics are either trademarks or registered trademarks of NEC Electronics Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. InfiniBand is a registered trademark and service mark of the InfiniBand Trade Association. PCI Express is a trademark of the PCI-SIG. Synplify ASIC is a registered trademark of Synplicity, Inc. OpenCAD is a registered trademark of NEC Electronics America, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other marks are property of their respective holders. #11040

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