SANTA CLARA, CA, – July 6, 2006 –Tensilica, Inc., a developer of configurable and standard microprocessor cores, is launching a campaign to raise $20,000 for Ballet San Jose (California) at this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC), July 24-27 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. DAC is a conference attended by over 10,000 engineers who design integrated circuits, or chips. By painting 10”x10” canvases, conference attendees will artistically contribute to giant murals, designed by German artist Lothar Krebs, that will be given to leading Silicon Valley companies that make substantial donations to Ballet San Jose. Ballerinas from Ballet San Jose will be assisting the artists in the Tensilica booth, number 3548, at the front of the North Hall.

"Every chip designer is, in many ways, an artist. So at DAC, we’re celebrating the artist within each of us by letting attendees paint parts of giant pictures that tell the story of chip design,” stated Chris Rowen, Tensilica’s president and CEO. “We’ll use this artwork to support another art – ballet. Ballet San Jose is an integral part of our Silicon Valley culture and deserves widespread support.”

During the 4-day DAC exhibition, attendees will be able to paint part of a different picture each day. The first montage will showcase state-of-the-art system-on-chip (SOC) design, which allows engineers to put complex multi-faceted electronics onto a single chip. The second painting will reflect how these complex SOCs are used in telecommunications applications ranging from cellular phones and telephone switches to Internet routers and global positioning satellite (GPS) devices. The third painting will highlight SOC design for entertainment and feature applications such as high-definition TV, television on cell phones, games, digital cameras and camcorders, and MP3 audio players. The fourth painting will show how electronic design has evolved over the past, from simple, single-transistor designs in the 1950s to today’s chips that contain a hundred million transistors or more. Tensilica has been a major innovator in the way chips are designed, with an automated approach that can slice months from the design and verification effort of chips used in a wide variety of applications.

Several Silicon Valley companies are considering making a $5,000 donation to Ballet San Jose to acquire one of these large (80” x 140”) paintings. They plan to display these paintings in their lobbies or other gallery areas.

The Artist – Lothar Krebs

Lothar Krebs, born in Hanau Germany in 1961, is a painter and illustrator who has become famous for his Puzzle Picture Paintings, which allow a large number of people to participate in creating a unique montage. Krebs creates the master plan for the art piece, then distributes portions of that plan onto smaller canvasses in outline form so large groups can participate. Together with concept artist GAX Axel Gundlach he has created Puzzle Picture Paintings for company events and trade shows for companies such as Deutsche Bank, Paulaner, Pfizer and Siemens. More information is available at www.krebsillustration.de.

Ballet San Jose

Ballet San Jose has become known as one of the most innovative, "classically-based” ballet companies in the country, with a resident company of 33 dancers from 12 countries around the world. Ballet San Jose performs to over 60,000 theater attendees annually. In addition to a four-program season, and their annual production of "The Nutcracker", Ballet San Jose also produces a series of ballets for young audiences. This season includes the American Premiere of "The Tinderbox," a ballet based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The company also runs a non-profit, year-round ballet school and donates thousands of tickets each year to Bay Area social and service organizations through their extensive outreach program. More information is available at www.balletsanjose.org.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors on the market today, in both an off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Tensilica’s low-power, benchmark-proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leading companies in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. All Tensilica processor cores are complete with a matching software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models, and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.

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Editors’ Notes:

• Tensilica and Xtensa are registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
• Tensilica’s announced licensees include ALPS, AMCC (JNI Corporation), Aquantia, Astute Networks, Atheros, ATI, Avago Technologies, Avision, Bay Microsystems, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Cypress, Crimson Microsystems, ETRI, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems, Ikanos Communications, LG Electronics, Lucid Information Technology, Marvell, MediaWorks, NEC Laboratories America, NEC Corporation, NetEffect, Neterion, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), NVIDIA, Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., PnpNetwork Technologies, Inc., sci-worx, Seiko Epson, Solid State Systems, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Stretch, TranSwitch Corporation, u-Nav Microelectronics,Victor Company of Japan (JVC) and WiQuest Communications.