10-04-06

Chip Estimate Announces $3.5M Financing
Funding to Be used As Company Bridges Chip Planning And Mainstream EDA Tool Flows

Cupertino, Calif. - October 4, 2006 --Chip Estimate Corporation, the leading provider of architectural-level chip planning solutions, announced today that it has raised three and one-half million dollars in expansion financing in two closings. ITU Ventures, who participated in the original seed funding of the company, led this round. The company has raised $5.5 million since its inception in 2003, and will use the latest round to fund working capital growth and accelerate the product roadmap for establishing tight and meaningful integration of architectural plans with industry-leading EDA implementation systems.

"Chip Estimate addresses the need of the industry for leveraging semiconductor data and design expertise at the earliest phase of design projects, before EDA flows begin" commented Jonah Schnel, Managing Partner, ITU Ventures. "In this next stage of growth, with the development of an even tighter integration with classic EDA tools, we believe Chip Estimate will have a significant impact on cost and time-to-market savings for the industry."

Chip architects, those who plan chip projects and assess project viability from a technical and economic perspective, have traditionally been outside the classic EDA design loop. Plans and specifications were unconnected from IC design flows, and optimizations of IP and architectures were left to design teams at the implementation stage of design. With the recent announcement of InCyte Enterprise, Chip Estimate introduced the first architectural-level system that incorporates the same technology data that had previously only been used later in the flow, putting the information at the architects' fingertips and enabling accurate what-if analysis before logic design begins. With accurate early plans now possible, driving constraints, IP, technology and architecture decisions into the implementation flow promises to significantly minimize late-stage time consuming and costly optimization iterations.

"Our community of chip planners has grown to 9,000 users who collectively have performed over 40,000 chip estimates with our systems," commented Adam Traidman, president of Chip Estimate. "With the introduction of InCyte Enterprise and even greater accuracy in estimates, we are responding to our customers' requests for an even tighter link between the specifications our systems generate and the EDA flows they want these plans to direct."

About Chip Estimate Corporation
Chip Estimate Corporation is an EDA company that delivers streamlined access to integrated chip project planning solutions. The company develops and markets the InCyte chip estimation systems, into which it integrates IP and manufacturing process models for the most accurate estimation possible. InCyte performs estimations of chip die size, power, leakage, yield, and cost and allows for rapid "what if" analysis at the architectural stage in the design flow. InCyte systems range from the free InCyte Lite to InCyte Enterprise, used by leading semiconductor companies to refine chip size, power and cost estimates throughout chip implementation flows. Chip Estimate partners with leading IP vendors and semiconductor manufacturers who share our mission of early and accurate chip planning for our mutual customers' ultimate design success. Since the 2005 launch of ChipEstimate.com, over 9,000 users have performed over 40,000 chip estimations with InCyte.

The company is headquartered at 10050 North Wolfe Road, Suite SW1-266, Cupertino, Calif. Telephone: (408) 255-0444. Facsimile: (408) 255-0344. Email: info@chipestimate.com. Website: http://www.ChipEstimate.com.

About ITU Ventures
ITU Ventures is the premier venture capital firm serving the unique needs of technology businesses emerging from the nation's leading research universities, federal labs and technology corporations. ITU Ventures invests in early-stage companies that are commercializing next-generation communication and semiconductor-related technologies. Jonah Schnel and Chad Brownstein are the Managing Partners of ITU Ventures. Website: http://www.itu.com.

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Press Contact:
Georgia Marszalek, ValleyPR for Chip Estimate Corp., +1 650 345 7477, Georgia@ValleyPR.com