Chipidea Marks 10th Year Anniversary By Announcing World's First Analog Intellectual Property (IP) Foundry(TM)

- Recognizing the semiconductor industry's need for an open market approach to providing comprehensive analog intellectual property (IP) solutions, Chipidea®, the world leader in analog/mixed-signal subsystems and IP, today announced it has created the first Analog IP Foundry(TM) to help customers circumvent the challenges of analog and mixed-signal design.

"As the world's number one provider of analog and mixed-signal IP, Chipidea is accelerating the growing trend away from discreet analog solutions and toward greater subsystems integration and advanced systems-on-chip solutions," stated Jose Franca, co-founder and CEO of Chipidea. "We recognized the need to accelerate this trend through an evolved open market approach that extends beyond providing simple IP blocks. Our Analog IP Foundry approach, in effect, levels the playing field by providing digital companies with a full range of analog solutions that were previously the exclusive privilege of IDMs and large system companies."

Claiming the industry's broadest state-of-the-art analog IP portfolio, the Analog IP Foundry's product lines include RF, Wireless, Power Management, Wireline, Audio, Video, and Connectivity Interfaces. Each of these product lines offer single function analog IP and subsystem cores that support multi-foundry / multiple-process generations from 1.8-micron to 65nm. Complementing the product lines are two key components of Chipidea's IP foundry model - Chipidea's Advanced Analog Lab and its Integration-to-Production Program.

Chipidea's Advanced Analog Lab

Comprised of more than 250 engineers, Chipidea is the largest non-captive analog research and development organization in the world. The Advance Analog Lab drives innovation by developing advanced architectures and circuitries to address new consumer standards (e.g. UWB, HDMI, WiMAX, MTV, and GPS) and design for manufacturability requirements.

Chipidea's Integration-to-Production Program

At the heart of Chipidea's approach is a total commitment to their customers' design success. Chipidea's Integration-to-Production Program builds on the company's application expertise and integration experience gained by helping customers tape-out more than 200 new designs per year.

Throughout the Integration-to-Production program, Chipidea's engineers configure the company's IP to meet specific customer application requirements, combining IP blocks into highly complex IP sub-systems. Post silicon, Chipidea's engineers can support the customer by assisting in characterizing the performance, manufacturability and production test requirements of their design.

10 Years of Analog and Mixed-Signal Success

During the spring of 1997, three analog and mixed-signal innovators, Professor Carlos Leme, Professor Joao Vital, and Professor Jose Franca came together in Lisbon, Portugal to discuss the challenges of analog design, IP integration, and the future of system-on-chip design. At the time, they articulated three beliefs that still hold true today:

1. Analog and mixed-signal design expertise is in short supply and the ability to develop high-quality, easily integrated IP requires a company that is focused on advancing not only the technology of analog, but the process of designing analog IP;

2. The complexity of developing analog and mixed-signal designs will continue to grow as systems-on-chip (SoCs) become more complex to meet the growing needs of advanced consumer electronics and wireless enabled devices; and

3. The successful implementation of intellectual property within an SoC or system-in-package (SIP) design depends on both the quality of the IP and the ability of the company supplying the IP to offer high-quality analog designs that easily hook into today's design methodologies.

Together, Chipidea's founders realized that there was a great opportunity to develop a company that would leverage the growing engineering expertise emerging in Portugal with the demand for analog and mixed-signal solutions. The culmination of their ten years' experience and success is Chipidea's Analog IP Foundry.

About Chipidea

Chipidea is the world's number one analog/mixed-signal IP supplier targeting fast-growing market segments including wireless communications, digital media and consumer electronics. Chipidea supports blue-chip customers across the globe, has an impeccable reputation for delivering high-quality products and is known for its reliable execution. Chipidea licenses its technology to leading companies in all major markets, delivering everything from high-precision, single-function blocks, to full analog sub-systems. For more information: www.chipidea.com