Aware Announces StratiPHY Chip - The Industry's Most Advanced ADSL2 IP Offering

BEDFORD, MA - January 23, 2003 - Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWRE), a worldwide leader and innovator of broadband intellectual property, today announced the immediate availability of its StratiPHY silicon, a major upgrade to its line of intellectual property (IP) offerings. The StratiPHY device is a complete physical instantiation of Aware's ADSL and ADSL2 core intellectual property in the form of a single digital chip. 

Aware's StratiPHY solution is the first complete ADSL2 CPE offering that supports all required and optional ADSL2 feature sets with performance that meets or exceeds domestic and international service provider requirements, including DSL Forum TR-048. StratiPHY is implemented in 0.18 micron and was fabricated at TSMC. 

With the addition of StratiPHY to Aware's intellectual property offerings, Aware's customers have access to a working silicon platform along with a complete turnkey package of RTL and firmware. The same RTL and firmware that are used in StratiPHY are available for license in soft form from Aware. This powerful combination of a soft macro and a physical chip reduces development costs and time-to-market. StratiPHY can also be used in its chip form for very rapid market entry strategies. 

Aware has also developed an end-to-end connectivity demonstration for ADSL2 using StratiPHY and a real-time CO development platform. Aware's test environment provides a platform to demonstrate the high value of ADSL2's features, as well as providing positive assurance to customers of the high quality of Aware's ADSL2 intellectual property. 

Luke Smithwick, Aware vice president of business development said, "Customer feedback from demonstrations of our StratiPHY platform as well as our end-to-end ADSL2 connectivity has been overwhelmingly positive. As an IP company, demonstrating technology in completely functional, manufacturable silicon is a powerful proof statement. It establishes the immediate availability of mature RTL and firmware and can support fast time-to-market initiatives. With StratiPHY, we have rounded out our intellectual property package in response to customers' needs for low risk, fast time-to-market, state-of-the-art IP. StratiPHY is the first in a family of such offerings from Aware."

About ADSL2
ADSL2 (also known as G.992.3) is the new standard that was consented by the ITU in August 2002. It provides numerous improvements over existing ADSL standards including line diagnostics, power management, power down and power cut-back, reduced framing and on-line configuration. Aware has led the introduction of many of these new features at the ITU. The ITU is currently finalizing ADSL2+, which builds upon ADSL2 by expanding the bandwidth to approximately 2 MHz and increasing achievable data rates to 24Mbps.

About Aware 
Aware, Inc. designs, develops, licenses and markets DSL technology that enables broadband communications over existing telephone networks. Its solutions, including splitterless G.lite, full-rate ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+, VeDSL™, Dr. DSL®, XRDSL™, StratiPHY™, FastADSL™, BondedADSL™, and G.shdsl address central office as well as consumer electronics requirements. More information about Aware can be found at http://www.aware.com.

Safe Harbor Warning
Portions of this release contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties, such as estimates or projections of future revenue and earnings and the growth of the DSL market. Aware wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results indicated by such statements. These factors include, but are not limited to: we have a unique business model, our quarterly results are difficult to predict, we depend on a limited number of licensees, we derive a significant amount of revenue from one customer, we depend on equipment companies to incorporate our technology into their products, we face intense competition from other DSL vendors, DSL technology competes with other technologies for broadband access, and our business is subject to rapid technological change. We refer you to the documents Aware files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the section titled Risk Factors in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2002 and other reports and filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.