Tensilica Appoints Tonbu as an Authorized Design Center

Santa Clara, CA, October 9, 2000 – Tensilica, Inc., a Santa Clara-based provider of configurable application-specific processor cores and development tools for System-on-Chip (SOC) designs, today announced that Tonbu, Inc., the leader in Global Collaborative Outsourcing, has been appointed a Tensilica Authorized Design Center and a charter member of the Tensilica Xtensions™ Network Program.

Design Centers provide essential services to many organizations that are defining and building their leading edge SOC designs today. Through the company’s Authorized Design Center program, a part of the Tensilica Xtensions Network Program, Tensilica ensures that these services will be available to its licensees. Tensilica Authorized Design Center engineering personnel receive extensive training on the Xtensa architecture, configuration and software development tools, on-going support and access to technology updates, and direct access to applications engineering.

“Tonbu has embraced the Internet to launch an innovative collaboration platform to deliver professional design services,” stated Bernie Rosenthal, Tensilica’s vice president of marketing and business development. “We are pleased to be working with Tonbu to provide design services solutions to enable our licensees to bring their Xtensa based products to market on time and to specification.”

Tonbu’s c-commerce software platform is helping companies leverage the power of the Internet by creating and delivering technologies and services that enable real-time collaboration on the Web through a standard Internet browser. The Company has deployed a multi-tiered collaborative commerce business model and complementary software that speed time-to-market and enhance product quality.

“Tensilica’s appointment of Tonbu as an Authorized Design Center and as a charter member of the Xtensions Network Program is a significant endorsement of the Tonbu collaborative commerce platform,” said Steven Mason, vice president of marketing of Tonbu. “Tensilica’s leadership in configurable processor cores that power information appliances and other Internet-aware devices makes them an ideal partner for Tonbu. We share a mission to help companies work smarter and more efficiently and believe that our combined real-time hardware and software solution will enhance the productivity and market power of Tensilica’s licensees.”

About Tonbu Corp.

Tonbu, Inc. (www.tonbu.com), is C-Commerce Powering the Next Industrial Revolution™ with a collaborative software platform that enables design, engineering, supply, and manufacturing firms to collaborate in real-time on the Web. Headquartered in San Jose, California, and founded in 1999, Tonbu is leading the global convergence of collaborative commerce, B2B use of the Internet and outsourcing. Tonbu’s C-Commerce platform is scalable, customizable and deployable to accelerate the product life-cycle in key markets, including telecommunications, Internet appliances, medical devices, networking, computer manufacturing, and semiconductors.

About Tensilica

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the fast-growing market for configurable microprocessor cores and software development tools for high volume, embedded systems. Using the company's proprietary Xtensa Processor Generator, system-on-a-chip (SOC) designers can develop a processor subsystem hardware design and a complete software development tool environment tailored to their specific requirements in hours.

Tensilica's solutions provide a proven, easy-to-use, methodology that enables designers to achieve optimum application performance in minimum design time. The Company is engaged in research, development, and customer support from its offices in Santa Clara, California, Waltham, Massachusetts, Princeton, N.J., Houston, Texas, Oxford, U.K. and Yokohama, Japan.

Tensilica is headquartered in Santa Clara, California (95054) at 3255-6 Scott Boulevard, and can be reached at (408) 986-8000 or via www.tensilica.com on the World Wide Web.

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"Tensilica" is a registered trademark and "Xtensa" and “Xtensions” are trademarks belonging to Tensilica Inc.

“Tonbu” and “C-Commerce Powering the Next Industrial Revolution” are trademarks of Tonbu, Inc.

All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.