07-10-06

VSIA And Chip Estimate Team To Increase Industry Access To QIP-Rated IP
ChipEstimate.com IP Portal provides destination for users seeking VSIA QIP Metric-rated IP

Wakefield, MA and Cupertino, Calif. - July 10, 2006 --The VSI Alliance (VSIA), a non-profit, leading Semiconductor IP standards organization and Chip Estimate Corporation today announced that they will work together to provide IP integrators with a unified website for locating, searching and selecting IP cores from companies who have adopted the QIP Metric from the VSI Alliance. The site can be found at www.ChipEstimate.com

Over the next few months, Chip Estimate will supplement their IP catalog with a listing of IP cores to which the QIP Metric has been applied, as this information is made available by the IP vendors. Once the QIP data has been incorporated, users will be able to locate cores that are QIP-rated allowing engineers to determine which core best addresses their design needs. Additionally, designers can download the InCyte tool at ChipEstimate.com to explore the effects of different IP within a design and to estimate chip die size, power and leakage.

"VSIA creates standards that are critical to the success of the SoC and IP industry. The QIP Metric is recognized by the industry as providing a valuable solution for evaluating and comparing IP cores," said Kathy Werner, VSIA President. "Chip Estimate provides a common site for locating IP and downloading their estimation tools to allow designers to explore tradeoffs and optimize chip plans."

In less than seven months of providing public access to the QIP Metric -- which currently addresses Soft IP cores and vendor assessment- the VSIA has recorded over 1000 unique user downloads. Jointly, the FSA and VSIA are developing the Hard IP evaluation metric that will be available soon. Providing public access to QIP scores through the ChipEstimate.com IP portal will further drive adoption of the QIP Metric in the SoC design process and ultimately result in more predictable, cost-effective and reusable designs.

"Chip Estimate's chip planning portal provides users with an integrated site for IP search, consideration and chip estimation," said Adam Traidman, President of Chip Estimate Corporation. "Providing QIP Metric scores advances our goal of facilitating easy access to quality IP for exploration and assessment of early chip plans to effectively reduce design time, risk, and cost."

About VSIA QIP Metric
The VSIA QIP Metric is a tool that can aggressively reduce the time typically required to make an IP purchase decision and to integrate the core. The Metric helps the IP vendor and IP consumer communicate based on an objective foundation. Besides setting up the basis for measuring a core's characteristics against an industry-approved list of attributes, the metric provides a view of the IP vendor's general approach to IP development. This enables a continuous improvement mechanism, and in turn, levels the playing field for vendors and allows an integrator to evaluate similar cores from competing vendors. The original QIP Metric created by the VSIA has been expanded through significant efforts from the FSA to include hard IP metrics.

About VSIA
The VSI Alliance (VSIA) is an open, international organization that includes representatives from all segments of the SoC industry: System houses, Semiconductor vendors, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies, and Intellectual Property (IP) providers. VSIA's mission is to dramatically enhance the productivity of the SoC design community by providing leading edge commercial and technical solutions and insight into the development, integration and reuse of IP. VSIA has wide industry participation from companies around the world. Membership is open to any company with an interest in the development and promotion of business solutions and open standards used in the design of System-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org, or e-mail to info@vsi.org.

About Chip Estimate Corporation
Chip Estimate Corporation is an EDA company focused on developing and delivering integrated chip project planning solutions. The company's InCyte systems are used at the architectural level of the electronics design flow to estimate integrated circuits and to perform "what if" analyses. The company's ChipEstimate.com website combines online IP search and select, and the ability to download InCyte to perform estimates using selected IP. The company partners with leading IP vendors, semiconductor manufacturers and industry organizations to help our mutual customers' achieve greater profitability and design success. To date over 5,000 registered users have performed 30,000 chip estimations with InCyte through ChipEstimate.com. For more information, visit the Chip Estimate web site at www.ChipEstimate.com, or e-mail to info@chipestimate.com.

The VSI Alliance is a trademark of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance. All other brands or trademarks are the property of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

Media Contacts:
VSIA
Hillary Cain
Cain Communications
(831) 439-2071
hcain@caincom.com


Chip Estimate Corporation
Georgia Marszalek
Valley PR
(650) 345-7477
georgia@valleypr.com