Tensilica Wins EDN's Innovation of the Year Award

Design Engineering Community Selects Tensilica's Xtensa IV Processor Over Hundreds of Other Candidates

March 14, 2002, Santa Clara, California … Tensilica, Inc., the leading supplier of configurable and extensible processor intellectual property (IP), today announced that it's Xtensa IV processor has been selected over hundreds of candidates as an EDN 2001 Innovation of the Year winner by editors and readers of EDN Worldwide Magazine. Chris Rowen, Tensilica's CEO, accepted the award on Tensilica's behalf at EDN's annual awards ceremony held in San Francisco on Tuesday evening.

A panel of EDN's technical editors selected finalist products in a variety of categories. EDN's readers then chose the winners through an online ballot on the EDN Access web site (www.ednmag.com). The winners will be highlighted in the March 21, 2002 issue of EDN and on EDN Access.

"Design engineers worldwide have endorsed our open approach to microprocessor development by selecting the Xtensa processor as an innovation winner," said Chris Rowen. "This award clearly shows that extensible processors are now mainstream, and Tensilica leads this fundamental trend in the embedded processor space. We're delivering the products and technologies that design engineers need to reduce design time and complexity."

The Xtensa IV processor is the latest generation of Tensilica's proven configurable and extensible microprocessor architecture. Tensilica's powerful, integrated hardware and software development environment offers thousands of configuration options and an unlimited range of customer-specific extensions which enable designers to carefully tune the processor for specific functionality. With an easy-to-use graphical interface, designers can take advantage of Tensilica's processor generator to create customized MPU solutions with specialized functions and instructions. Because these instructions are recognized as "native" by a complete set of software development tools, developers can simultaneously tune both application software and processor hardware to meet specific speed, power and feature goals.

Products and technologies qualifying for a 2001 EDN Innovation award must have been introduced and commercially marketed from January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2001. Awards were given in sixteen major categories: Analog ICs; Digital ICs; Power ICs; DSPs; Communications; Components, Hardware & Interconnect; Computers, Boards, Buses; EDA; Embedded Development; Multimedia; Peripherals; 8/16-Bit Processors; 32/64-Bit Processors; Power Sources; Software; Test & Measurement; plus Innovator of the Year. The Xtensa IV processor was selected in the "32/64-bit Processor" category.

EDN, the premier design magazine of the electronics industry, is published by Reed Business Information. Headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts, EDN serves the vital information needs of design engineers and engineering managers worldwide. The EDN Worldwide franchise includes EDN, EDN Europe, EDN Asia, EDN China, EDN Japan, and EDN Access, the only full-content, EOEM publication web site.

About Tensilica, Inc.

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the fast-growing market for configurable processors and software development tools for high volume, embedded systems. Using the company's proprietary Xtensa Processor Generator, system-on-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 in Santa Clara, California; Burlington, Massachusetts; Princeton, NJ; Austin, Texas; Raleigh, NC; Oxford, U.K.; Stockholm, Sweden; Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.; 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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Editors’ Notes:

"Tensilica" and "Xtensa" are registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica, Inc. All other registered trademarks or trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Tensilica's announced licensees are Avision, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hughes Network Systems, IC4IC, Ikanos Communications, JNI Corporation, Marvell (Galileo Technology), Mindspeed Technologies, National Semiconductor, NEC Networks, NEC Solutions, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), ONEX Communications, OptiX Networks, Osaka & Kyoto Universities, TranSwitch Corporation, Victor Company of Japan (JVC) and ZiLOG.