TriCN partners with PLDApplications for full PCI Express solution

Companies' PCI Express PHY and IP Core Establish Compatibility

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, SAN FRANCISCO, CA - September 7, 2004 -- TriCN, a leading developer of intellectual property (IP) for high-speed semiconductor interface technology, and PLD Applications (PLDA), a leading developer of PCI IP Core solutions, today announced the interoperability of TriCN's PCI Express PHY and the PLDA PCI Express IP Core, providing customers with a complete validated PCI Express solution.  Compatibility of the two products was proved via simulation testing of TriCN's PCI Express PHY within the PLDA PCI Express IP verification environment.  The combined PCI Express PHY and IP core solution supports multiple lane configurations, including x1, x2, x4, x8, x16 and x32.

TriCN's PCI Express PHYs and PLDA's PCI Express IP Cores offer a powerful set of features for developers seeking to incorporate a complete PCI Express solution into their design.  TriCN's PHY's offer the most area and power efficient designs in the industry, including a true x1 lane configuration. The PLDA PCI Express IP Core is highly flexible and configurable, and is designed for easy migration between FPGA, Structured ASIC and Standard Cell technologies.

"Establishing interoperability between the TriCN PCI Express PHY and the PLDA PCI Express IP Core is an important achievement for our companies, and for our customers," said Ron Nikel, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of TriCN.  "It demonstrates that this complete PCI Express solution will work together seamlessly, and mitigates the risk to our customer's design."

"Like TriCN, PLD Applications is focused on high-performance design," said Stephane Hauradou, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of PLD Applications. "Both of our company's bring years of experience developing complex high-performance interfaces and busses.  The latest result of these efforts is the combination of the PLDA PCI Express IP Core with the TriCN PCI Express PHY, which provides customers with a verified, highly configurable, and area efficient PCI Express solution.

"For designers seeking to implement PCI Express solutions into their designs, establishing that the PHY and the Core will function together is a critical checkpoint," said Jim Pappas, director of technology initiatives of Intel's, Enterprise Platform Group. "We're pleased to see TriCN and PLDA collaborate to offer the industry a robust solution that streamlines and increases the viability of PCI Express designs."

About TriCN's PCI Express PHY
TriCN PCI Express PHY is a fully PIPE (1.0a) compliant hard macro solution which includes the SerDes, the PIPE logic and the I/Os, and provides the industry's most efficient design for area and power.  Supporting all lane configurations of the PCI Express spec, (x1, x2, x4, x8, x16, x32), TriCN's PCI Express product family includes a true x1 solution for area and power optimization. The PHYs are delivered as hard macros requiring no further RTL synthesis, significantly reducing engineering time and risk over comparable solutions with soft IP components.

About PLDA PCI Express IP solution
PLDA PCI Express IP core is highly flexible and configurable, and targets all implementations: Root complex, Endpoint, Switch upstream and downstream, forward and reverse Bridge. It includes MAC, data link and transaction layers.  Not only is its configurable and flexible architecture independent of application logic, PHY designs and implementation tools, but it is also completely independent of the target technology: a few precise modules are optimized for each technology to target. This solution allows the licensees to easily migrate among FPGA, Structured ASIC and Standard cell technologies optimally.  PLDA core has also proven successful interoperability with the main PCI Express vendors -- motherboard, switch, bridge and PHY IP, for example.  The PLDA PCI Express IP core is available for customer evaluation at: www.plda.com.

Availability
TriCN's PCI Express PHY products are supported and available in the TSMC 130nm and the PLDA� PCI Express IP Core are supported and available for ASIC, FPGA, and Standard Cell applications.

About TriCN
Founded in 1997, San Francisco, California-based TriCN is a leading developer of high- performance semiconductor interface intellectual property (IP). The company provides a complete portfolio of IP for maximizing data throughput on and off the chip.  All products are designed using rigorous signal integrity and timing analysis to ensure first time power-up success. Products include Base I/O libraries for pad-ring creation, high-performance memory and networking interfaces, multi-function I/O's compatible with multiple interface protocols, and multi-gigabit PHY products. TriCN's customers range from fabless semiconductor to systems companies and IDMs.  For more information, please visit TriCN's web site at www.tricn.com.        

About PLD Applications
Pioneering the PCI IP core market, PLDA was also among the first to introduce a real PCI-X 133MHz core and is today leading the migration to the new PCI Express architecture.  This sharp focus and success has met the needs of more than 400 customers on all continents, and has made PLDA the 2nd world's largest provider of PCI and derivatives busses IP cores (source Gartner-Dataquest 2003) and a proud member of the 2003 Deloitte European Technology Fast 500.  PLDA is a member of the Altera AMPP program, Intel® Developer Network for PCI Express Architecture, PCISIG and PICMG.  For more information, visit PLDA at www.plda.com or contact PLDA directly at: +33 442 393 600.