09-11-07

FSA AND CHIP ESTIMATE COLLABORATE TO BRING GREATER VALUE TO THE SEMICONDUCTOR DESIGN COMMUNITY

Hard IP Quality Assessment and "Risk Profiles" Now Available Exclusively at ChipEstimate.com

San Jose, California; September 11, 2007 --FSA, the global voice of the fabless business model, announces its collaboration with Chip Estimate Corporation to bring greater value to the semiconductor design community with FSA's IPecosystem Tool Suite.

With this agreement, vendors now have an option to upload their Hard Intellectual Property (IP) Quality Risk Assessment Tool "risk profiles" to Chip Estimate's chip planning portal.

In addition, Chip Estimate users have the option to request a vendor's risk profiles or request that a vendor complete the Tool for their IP or family of IP within their portfolio.

These features have been released as part of FSA's Hard IP Quality Risk Assessment Tool version 3.0; please see related announcement.

"FSA selected Chip Estimate because its chip planning portal is comprehensive with over 6,000 IP components, it has a powerful IP search tool, and it offers free chip prediction technology to enable designers to fully explore IP in a chip context," said Lisa Tafoya, vice president of global research at FSA. "Because Chip Estimate is providing worldwide access to FSA's Hard IP Quality Risk Assessment profiles on its site, the design community will have an additional tool that will enhance and increase the quality of overall chip designs based on industry-developed IP quality profiles."

"Strengthening our alliance with FSA and leading IP suppliers by making FSA's IP Quality Risk Assessment Tool profiles available to our design community delivers even greater capabilities for predicting overall design quality of end products," said Adam Traidman, president of Chip Estimate.

The Hard IP Quality Risk Assessment Tool, the first deliverable in FSA's IPecosystem Tool Suite, collects information about an IP vendor, its design methodology and the IP under evaluation to enable risk assessment across seven criteria: IP design, integration, verification, process technology, product documentation, reliability and test.

"As more SoC designers adopt a third-party IP integration strategy, they must be able to assess and quantify any risk that may be associated with this 'buy versus make' decision," said Larry Morrell, vice president and general manager of IP Products at Impinj. "FSA's quality risk assessment tool provides that assurance, as well as a way to identify the high-quality IP suppliers."

"One of the major challenges the semiconductor community faces today is ensuring that their IC design functionality is not compromised by electrostatic discharge (ESD) design choices," said Koen Verhaege, executive director of Sarnoff Europe. "By making our IP data available in an easy-to-use online system, while marrying this to the Hard IP Quality Risk Assessment Tool providing objective quality reference, we are empowering our customers to make more informed decisions for their IC designs."

To learn more, please visit www.fsa.org/IPecosystem or www.chipestimate.com.

Search for IP with FSA Risk Profiles here.

About FSA
FSA is the voice of the global fabless business model. Incorporated in 1994, FSA positively impacts the growth and return on invested capital of this business model to enhance the environment for innovation. It provides a platform for meaningful global collaboration between fabless companies and their partners; identifies and articulates opportunities and challenges to enable solutions; and provides research, resources, publications and survey information. Members include fabless companies and their supply chain and service partners, representing more than 21 countries across the globe. Visit the FSA website >>

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 chip estimation possible. InCyte Enterprise(tm) is recipient of a 2007 International Engineering Consortium DesignVision Award. 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 12,000 users have performed over 50,000 chip estimations with InCyte.

FSA Contact:
Erica Schiller
Director of Marketing
(972) 866-7579, ext. 120
eschiller@fsa.org

Media Contact:
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Shelton PR
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Chip Estimate Media Contact:
Georgia Marszalek
ValleyPR for Chip Estimate Corp
Office: +1 650 345 7477
Georgia@ValleyPR.com