SUNNYVALE, Calif. — March 31, 2010 — CriticalBlue, a pioneer in embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and verification tools, and MIPS Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: MIPS), a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications and business applications, announced today enhanced and groundbreaking support for the MIPS32® architecture within CriticalBlue’s Prism product. Software developers will now be able to analyze their existing software applications and quickly assess the tangible benefits of migrating to MIPS32 multithreaded and multicore devices.

This announcement continues the deepening of Prism capabilities to enable leading multicore vendors such as MIPS Technologies to provide an ecosystem to their customers which can clearly demonstrate the differentiation of the MIPS32 architecture in the context of the customers’ own software applications. Prism is an award winning Eclipse-based embedded multicore programming system which allows software engineers to easily assess and realize the full potential of multicore processors without significant changes to their development flow. Prism analyzes the behavior of code running on hardware development boards, virtual machines or simulators. It allows engineers to take their existing sequential code, and before making any changes, explore and analyze opportunities for concurrency. Having identified the optimal parallelization strategies in this way, developers will implement parallel structures, and use Prism again to verify efficient and thread-safe operations.

The new Prism capabilities for the MIPS32 architecture are being developed in two phases. The first phase, available today, is an Instruction level Platform Support Package (PSP) for the MIPS32 architecture. This supports the analysis of software applications running under Linux on either hardware development boards or virtual machines such as QEMU. End users are split in their preference for development boards and simulators for development, and therefore Prism supports both flows. MIPS developers will now be able to trace their existing software applications on a single core platform and then quickly analyze the potential benefits of migrating to a multicore architecture, all in the familiar Eclipse framework.

In the second phase, available at the end of April 2010, a Core level PSP for the MIPS32 architecture will bring an additional level of accuracy to software developers. Going beyond software mapping to multicore hardware, with this release users will be able to quantify the benefit of software migration to hardware multithreading available in certain MIPS cores, such as the MIPS32 34K® and 1004K® families. Users will be able to analyze data cache misses on a thread, function or source line level, resulting in an ability to see the impact of such cache misses on the overall concurrent schedule.  All of this can be done on an existing unmodified software application running on a single core model or development board. The MIPS32 Core PSP is the first Core level PSP to support hardware multithreading impact analysis.

A 30 day evaluation copy of the Instruction PSP for Prism for all 32-bit MIPS cores can be downloaded immediately from the CriticalBlue website. The Core PSP will also be available for evaluation when released. Initial hardware development boards supported by the Prism MIPS32 PSPs are the Ubiquiti RouterStation Pro (MIPS32 24Kc™ core) and the Sigma Vantage 8654 (MIPS32 24KEf™ core). A Prism demonstration will be available in the MIPS Technologies booth, number 2410, at the Embedded Systems Conference and Multicore Expo on April 27-29, 2010 in San Jose, California.

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“MIPS Technologies has produced a very impressive array of multicore and multithreaded cores and platforms,” said David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue. “Helping end users to navigate the selection process by putting together an efficient parallelization strategy and a compelling Return on Investment case is precisely the reason that Prism exists. The innovative work we have done with MIPS Technologies to enable them to showcase their unique differentiators has been very satisfying.

“We are seeing incredible market traction for our multithreaded and multicore products, and we are pleased to be working with CriticalBlue to provide our customers with the ability to evaluate their own software running on these platforms,” said Art Swift, vice president, marketing at MIPS Technologies. “CriticalBlue’s Prism solution is a unique and compelling addition to the MIPS software development ecosystem; one that has the potential to result in faster deployment of MIPS-Based products.”

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 31, 2010 — Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS), a world leader in software and IP for semiconductor design, verification and manufacturing, and SiliconBlue, a leader in ultra-low power, single-chip SRAM FPGAs, today announced that SiliconBlue has chosen Synopsys Synplify Pro® FPGA synthesis software as the synthesis tool of choice for its iCE65™ family of mobileFPGA™ devices.  SiliconBlue will distribute with its iCEcube™ software a version of the Synplify Pro software optimised for iCE65 devices. This version of the Synplify Pro software will have a thorough understanding of the unique architectural structure of SiliconBlue’s devices, bringing Synopsys’ world-class synthesis and mapping technology to SiliconBlue customers.

“The unprecedented success of our mobileFPGA devices has driven us to improve our development tool platform. Providing reliable, state-of-the-art synthesis is vital to our customers’ success,” said Kapil Shankar, CEO of SiliconBlue. “We chose Synopsys as our synthesis tool partner because of Synplify Pro’s well-known standard of excellence in quality of results, ease-of-use, and overall platform robustness.”

The customised version of the Synplify Pro software will contain all of the features of the standard version, and will be tuned for the SiliconBlue mobile FPGA device architecture. Because of its understanding of the iCE65 family architecture, the Synplify Pro software will be able to generate a high-performing netlist optimised for low area utilisation – an important consideration in low power applications.  Users of the Synplify Pro software can choose to generate either Verilog or VHDL netlists to be used for simulation from the software.  The Synplify Pro software will also be tightly integrated and tested with SiliconBlue’s iCEcube software.

Gary Meyers, vice president and general manager of Synopsys’ Synplicity Business Group said, “SiliconBlue is clearly extending the range of applications for FPGAs into the handheld market, reaching designers that have not used programmable logic in the past. The combination of Synplify Pro and iCE65 mobileFPGA devices allows both of our companies to cultivate this new market together.”

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) is a world leader in electronic design automation (EDA), supplying the global electronics market with the software, intellectual property (IP) and services used in semiconductor design, verification and manufacturing. Synopsys’ comprehensive, integrated portfolio of implementation, verification, IP, manufacturing and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) solutions helps address the key challenges designers and manufacturers face today, such as power and yield management, software-to-silicon verification and time-to-results. These technology-leading solutions help give Synopsys customers a competitive edge in bringing the best products to market quickly while reducing costs and schedule risk. Synopsys is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has more than 65 offices located throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Asia and India. Visit Synopsys online at http://www.synopsys.com/.

About SiliconBlue

SiliconBlue Technologies provides a new class of ultra-low power, single-chip, SRAM FPGAs designed specifically for handheld consumer applications. Manufactured on TSMC’s 65nm LP (low power) CMOS process, the iCE65 mobileFPGA family meets the capacity, power, area, and price requirements for battery-operated products such as Smartphones, eBooks/ePaper, netbooks, mobile internet devices, portable media players, handheld POS terminals, medical instruments, digital still cameras and flash camcorders. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company has a highly skilled team of PLD experts who have been instrumental in developing and patenting many of the leading programmable logic technologies on the market today.  Visit SiliconBlue online at http://www.siliconbluetech.com/.