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Lattice Announces Updates And Enhancements To Its FPGA Design Tool Suite

HILLSBORO, OR — APRIL 5, 2010 — Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: LSCC) today announced the immediate availability of Service Pack 1 for Version 8.0 of its ispLEVER® FPGA design tool suite.  Service Pack 1 is an important update for users of LatticeECP3™ FPGA devices. “Service Pack 1 enhances and extends design support of the LatticeECP3 family to enable users to achieve low cost, low power design goals.  More specifically, this important update allows users of the ECP3-150EA device to design with even greater confidence that the board-level behavior of their design, such as power and timing, will match what the tools report,” said Mike Kendrick, Lattice’s Manager of Software Product Planning.  “SP1 also further boosts DSP application performance in the LatticeECP3 devices.”

Updated Support for the LatticeECP3 FPGA Family

Service Pack 1 updates the device values to production characterized silicon for the LatticeECP3-150EA device.  With SP1, static timing analysis, timing simulation and power calculation will report results that even more accurately reflect the behavior of the actual production device.  Moreover, PCS/SERDES calibration settings used for the supported IO protocols have been tuned to provide more robust behavior.  HDL generation of generic DDR interfaces from the IPexpress™ tool, first introduced in ispLEVER 8.0, has been enhanced to include two additional interfaces, resulting in more design and implementation flexibility.  There is also additional flexibility in the choice of pins for generic DDR interfaces.  Synplify Pro® synthesis has added several enhancements, allowing higher performance and lower utilization in DSP-centric applications by further exploiting the unique sysDSP™ Block cascading capability.

About the ispLEVER Design Tool Suite

The ispLEVER design tool suite is the flagship design environment for the latest Lattice FPGA products.  It provides a complete set of powerful tools for all design tasks, including project management, IP integration, design planning, place and route, in-system logic analysis and more. The ispLEVER tool suite is available for download, or on DVD for Windows, UNIX or Linux platforms.  Synopsys’ Synplify Pro advanced FPGA synthesis is included for all operating systems supported, and Aldec’s Active-HDL Lattice Edition simulator is included for Windows.

Third Party Tool Support

In addition to the tool support for Lattice devices provided by the OEM versions of Synplify Pro and Active-HDL, which are included in the ispLEVER tool suite, Lattice devices are also supported by the full versions of Synopsys Synplify Pro and Aldec Active-HDL.  Mentor Graphics ModelSim SE and Precision RTL synthesis also support the latest Lattice devices, including the LatticeECP3 family.

Pricing and Availability

The ispLEVER 8.0 Service Pack 1 tool suite for Windows, UNIX and Linux users is available immediately without charge for customers with active design tool maintenance contracts.  Pricing for the full ispLEVER design tool suite starts at $1,295 for the Windows version.

About Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice is the source for innovative FPGA, PLD, programmable Power Management and Clock Management solutions.  For more information, visit www.latticesemi.com

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Cypress Introduces Easy-to-Use Development Platform for iPhone and iPod Accessories Based on Revolutionary PSoC® 3 Architecture

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 5, 2010 – Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq: CY) today introduced a new development platform for Apple iPhone and iPod accessories based on its new PSoC® 3 architecture. Designers can use Cypress’s new CY8CKIT-023 PSoC Expansion Board Kit For iPhone & iPod Accessories – a plug-in board to Cypress’s CY8CKIT-001 PSoC Platform Development Kit – to streamline design of innovative mobile accessories using the flexible PSoC programmable system-on-chip architecture. The new kit leverages the iPhone OS operating system of Apple’s iPhone and iPod products and the corresponding iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) to provide a two-way communication interface between apps from Apple’s App Store and corresponding accessories.

The easy-to-use PSoC-based development platform enables highly-integrated modular design of functions such as capacitive touch-sensing, LCD segment drive and much more for traditional iPhone and iPod accessories such as audio docks and speakers, chargers and automotive products. The platform also opens up a new realm of accessories that can leverage the 480 x 320 touchscreen display and many other features of the iPhone and iPod touch for a myriad of markets and applications, including health and wellness, point-of-sale, RFID, and diagnostics and instrumentation tools. Details on the new kit and a video demonstration are available at www.cypress.com/go/cy8ckit-023, and for more information on the Made for iPod program, visit http://developer.apple.com/ipod

When used in conjunction with the PSoC Development Kit, the PSoC Expansion Board Kit For iPhone & iPod Accessories offers support for Cypress’s recently announced PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 product families, as well as the PSoC 1 family. PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices extend the world’s only programmable analog and digital embedded design platform, delivering unmatched time-to-market, integration and flexibility across 8-, 16-, and 32-bit applications. The platform is powered by the revolutionary PSoC Creator™ Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which introduces a unique schematic-based design methodology along with fully tested, pre-packaged analog and digital peripherals easily customizable through user-intuitive wizards and APIs to meet specific design requirements. The PSoC 1 family delivers similar ease-of-use and flexibility with a cost-optimized core, and is supported by the powerful PSoC Designer™ software tool.

“The popularity of the iPhone and iPod has developers rushing to create a wide range of accessories, and even more so now that they can leverage their multi-touch interfaces and widescreen displays,” said Norm Taffe, executive vice president of the Consumer and Computation Division at Cypress. ”The flexibility of our PSoC platform helps developers quickly design products with differentiating features, make last-minute changes and still hit market windows. They can also reuse the IP they develop across multiple product variations.” 

The PSoC Expansion Board Kit For iPhone & iPod Accessories features a plug-in board that connects to the PSoC Development Kit, enabling PSoC to communicate with the iPhone and iPod. The kit showcases the capabilities for developers to record to and play from an iPhone or iPod with a microphone input and speaker output on the plug-in board, while simultaneously highlighting PSoC’s capabilities to power CapSense capacitive touch-sensing buttons and sliders for playback control as well as drive an LCD to display metadata from multimedia. The kit also comes with an iPhone app and a PSoC project example to demonstrate communication between iPhone apps and accessories. Additionally, Cypress plans to release a full assortment of other plug-in boards that each interface to a variety of electronic sensors and actuators and perform various application functions such as audio processing, Controller Area Network (CAN), high precision analog sensors, QVGA graphics and more.

Availability and Photo

The CY8CKIT-023 PSoC Expansion Board Kit For iPhone & iPod Accessories is now available to Made for iPod licensees via Apple’s authorized distributor. A high-resolution photo of the kit is available at www.cypress.com/go/pr/ipodkitphoto.

The CY8CKIT-001 PSoC Development Kit contains a main PSoC development board and processor module boards for the different architectures. It also includes a MiniProg3 debug and evaluation device, prototyping cable kit, a USB cable, a 12V AC power adapter, and both PSoC Creator and PSoC Designer software. Sample projects are also provided. The kit is available today, priced at US$249.00. Designers can get more information and order the kit from www.cypress.com/go/psoc

PSoC — Because Change Happens

PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design, offering a flash-based equivalent of a field-programmable ASIC without lead-time or NRE penalties. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality and reducing system cost.

The new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures include high-precision programmable analog capability (up to 20-bit resolution for an Analog to Digital Converter) and expanded programmable digital resources integrated with powerful, industry-standard MCU cores and ample memory and communications peripherals. PSoC 3 devices are based on a high-performance 8-bit 8051 processor, while PSoC 5 devices include a powerful 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor. The products provide designers with a seamless, programmable design platform, enabling easy migration from 8 to 32 bits. The robust features of these new solutions dramatically expand the applications and markets that PSoC can address, including automotive, portable medical, industrial and many more. The PSoC 1 family is based on a cost-optimized 8-bit M8C core. More information about PSoC products is available at www.cypress.com/psoc and free online training is at www.cypress.com/psoctraining

About Cypress

Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship PSoC® programmable system-on-chip families and derivatives such as PowerPSoC® solutions for high-voltage and LED lighting applications, CapSense® touch sensing and TrueTouch™ solutions for touchscreens. Cypress is the world leader in USB controllers, including the high-performance West Bridge® solution that enhances connectivity and performance in multimedia handsets. Cypress is also a leader in high-performance memories and programmable timing devices. Cypress serves numerous markets including consumer, mobile handsets, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial and military. Cypress trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol CY. Visit Cypress online at www.cypress.com.

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