Vaishali Semiconductor selects ARC's processor for its Bluetooth product family

Elstree, England, 2 May 2001 - ARC International plc (LSE:ARK), a leading designer and developer of customizable, high performance microprocessors and trading through its subsidiaries as ARC Cores, announced today that Vaishali Semiconductor has selected ARC?s technology for its BluetoothTM product family. ARC?s technology was selected because of its features suited to low cost, battery-powered applications, and the library of peripheral functions available from ARC to accelerate product development.

Vaishali Semiconductor is a California-based fabless semiconductor company, focused on providing leading edge semiconductor products aimed at broadband transceiver technology such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Infiniband and Bluetooth? wireless networking application-specific standard products (ASSPs).

Dr. David Sear, CEO of Vaishali, said, ?We evaluated all of the leading-edge suppliers of processor cores to ensure that we chose one which would give our products a real competitive advantage. We have entered into a comprehensive licence program with ARC and we have found the company to be extremely responsive in helping us get the tools together and get trained in their use, so that our project could get off the ground rapidly.?

He adds, ?Furthermore, we have found that ARC, through its subsidiaries, has been busy building a powerful library of peripheral functions such as a USB engine, which offers us a rapid time-to-market with substantial added value to our products.?

Vaishali chose ARC?s 32-bit RISC core because it is a synthesizable ?soft? core with an extremely small die area. Chris Stacey, director of Bluetooth? development at Vaishali, comments, ?It offers us plenty of performance at a very low power consumption, making it ideally suited to the market demands for low cost, battery-powered Bluetooth?-enabled semiconductor devices. From a system designer?s viewpoint, the ability to design custom ARC instructions so that embedded software can be optimized for performance and memory utilization is extremely attractive. Unlike cores only available as ?hard? macros, ARC?s processor can be engineered along with all the other functions to tailor the design to the needs of the application.?

About Vaishali Semiconductor LLC
Vaishali is a privately held company that was founded in 1999 as a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Silicon Valley. Design centers in China and India have been established and a European office has been opened in Germany. Major investments have been made to develop ASSP products for wireline, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Infiniband and wireless Bluetooth? technology which will use radio to allow notebook PCs, mobile phones, PDAs and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) smart phones to share access to the Internet, a corporate intranet, and emerging data and voice services. Asian, European, and domestic sales and distribution networks have been formed. The company?s website is located at http://www.vaishali.com

Statements made in this press release that are not historical facts include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include, among others, market acceptance of the ARC technology; fluctuations in and unpredictability of the Company?s quarterly results; general economic and business conditions; regulatory policies adopted by governmental authorities; assumptions regarding the Company?s future business strategy; changes in technology; competition; ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; risks associated with the Company?s international operations; and other uncertainties that are discussed in the ?Investment Considerations? section of the Company?s listing particulars dated 28 September 2000 filed with the United Kingdom Listing Authority and the Registrar of Companies in England and Wales.

ARC International (UK) Ltd. and ARC Cores, Inc., both of which are wholly owned subsidiaries of ARC International plc, trade under the name of ARC Cores. ARC Cores is a trademark of ARC International (UK) Ltd. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.