FlexASIC Broadens Appeal by Adding Magma Blast Create SA Support to Enhance Performance and Design Flexibility

Santa Clara, California, May 24, 2005 -- eASIC® Corporation, Magma® Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA), and Flextronics Semiconductor today announced the availability of the complete Easy eFlow tools suite, incorporating the Blast Create™ SA tool for the FlexASIC product family. The three companies have established a long-term partnership to provide an optimal Structured ASIC product addressing the deep submicron design issues of cost, time to market and performance. FlexASIC devices, manufactured in 0.13-micron CMOS process, are offered by both eASIC and Flextronics Semiconductor. The Easy eFlow tool suite which includes Blast Create SA, is a unified design flow that allows for a seamless and fast path to affordable, high performance programmable ASIC designs.

“It is clear that the Structured ASIC Market is now entering boom times,” Said Jerry Worchel, Principal Analyst, ASIC/ASSP and Intellectual Property Service Semiconductor Research at In-Stat. “In-Stat’s Current projections for the structured ASIC market indicate a 64.5% CAGR between 2004 and 2009, or from a dollar perspective, dollar shipment value will grow at a rapid pace, going from $209.8 million in 2004 to $2,520.9 million by 2009. Included in this category is eASIC’s unique via configurable technology, which is as close as one can get to a zero time-to-market approach, at least from the RTL-to-tapeout perspective, as recently announced by STMicroelectronics. The FlexASIC product might take a while for broad-based acceptance to occur, but as design engineers get accustomed to the technology and the advantages it affords, this will become their preferred ASIC design methodology.”

The Easy eFlow features a complete, high performance RTL-to-GDSII solution designed specifically for the FlexASIC product with its unique single via programmable architecture and SRAM based Look Up Tables. Blast Create SA eASIC support includes structure-specific RTL synthesis, direct mapping to chip hierarchy and dedicated resources, and cell clustering and packing. It also features physical synthesis to handle physical site constraints and embedded macros such as variable size memory, automatic assignments to low-skew pre-routed clock and power networks and routing-aware timing-driven placement to provide a fast and predictable path from RTL to structured-ASIC silicon. With this solution, the FlexASIC product allows customers to enjoy very low-cost programmable ASICs with reduced development cycles, using the winning combination of eASIC’s innovative patented technology, Flextronics’ world-class design and manufacturing service expertise and Magma’s state-of-the-art design solutions.

“FlexASIC™ is a best-in-class solution and addresses the industry needs of ASIC-like performance, a per-unit cost that is a fraction of an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), and improved time to market,” said Elli Yaniv, General Manager of the digital business unit of Flextronics Semiconductor. “This allows design engineers to make multiple changes to their designs without costly ASIC reworks.”

“eASIC is aimed at providing a comprehensive and affordable programmable ASIC solution, supported by world-class manufacturing services such as Flextronics Semiconductor and state-of-the art design tools, including Magma and other leading EDA vendors”, said Ronnie Vasishta, eASIC Executive Vice President of Marketing. “As the customization cost of semiconductor devices has reached an unprecedented high, it is an ideal and fertile environment for a disruptive technology such as eASIC’s to emerge. A new era of low-cost platform ASIC and therefore mass customization of IC devices can be made possible with maskless lithography. This will allow advances such as one day turn-around for chip design and a few days turn-around for chip manufacturing with Zero NRE. With these kind of changes the semiconductor industry is once again poised to stimulate innovation. The FlexASIC product embraces this concept and can deliver on the promise of low-cost, mass customization.”

“Through our partnership with Flextronics Semiconductor and eASIC, we can meet the demands of designers that want FPGA-like flexibility and fast turnaround, but at a fraction of the cost of traditional ASIC manufacturing,” said Kam Kittrell, general manager of Magma’s Logic Design Business Unit. “We’re very pleased to be able to offer mutual customers a fully customized solution that takes advantage of eASIC’s unique structured ASIC architecture. Support for this architecture extends Magma’s Unified Platform Synthesis™ technology, which provides a single synthesis platform that targets RTL to FPGA, structured ASIC or standard cell platforms and enables physical optimization on all platforms to deliver optimal area and timing results.”

Availability

Easy eFlow, including the Magma’s Blast Create SA, is currently in limited release. Full production release is scheduled for Q3 2005.

The 0.13 micron FlexASIC product, including 6 members ranging from 250K to 3 Million ASIC gates, with up to 2.8 Mbit RAM, is available for initial customers implementations and will be offered for full production in Q3 2005.

About Magma

Magma provides leading software for designing highly complex integrated circuits while maximizing Quality of Results with respect to area, timing and power, and at the same time reducing overall design cycles and costs. Magma provides a complete RTL-to-GDSII design flow that includes prototyping, synthesis, place & route, and signal and power integrity chip design capabilities, capacitance extraction, design For test (DFT), physical verification (DRC/LVS), static and statistical timing analysis and characterization and modeling in a single executable, offering “The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon”™. Magma’s software also includes products for advanced logical, physical synthesis and architecture development tools for programmable logic devices (PLDs), FPGAs and Structured ASICs; capacitance extraction; and characterization and modeling. The company’s stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

About eASIC

eASIC® has developed a breakthrough Configurable Logic technology aimed at dramatically reducing the overall fabrication cost and time of customized high-performance semiconductor chips. Its Structured eASIC architecture enables rapid and low-cost ASIC and SoC (System-on-Chip) designs by innovative use of proven programmable logic fabric in conjunction with single-via customizable segmented routing. As single-via generates ten times higher throughput of Direct-write e-Beam customization, it enables eASIC to offer NRE-free Structured ASIC. The Structured eASIC technology was successfully proven in silicon and validated by world-class semiconductor vendors. Partnering with industry leaders to jointly develop, manufacture and market Structured ASIC products, the company is positioned to become the preferred Structured ASIC solution.

eASIC Corporation is a privately held company, Venture Capital backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Headquartered in San-Jose, California, eASIC was founded in 1999 by Zvi Or-Bach, the founder of Chip Express who is viewed by many as the “father of Structured ASIC technology”.

www.eASIC.com

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Magma is a registered trademark and Blast Create and “The Fastest Path from RTL to Silicon” are trademarks of Magma Design Automation Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-looking statements:

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including statements about the features and benefits of the eASIC, Magma, Flextronics flow and production release dates are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, but not limited to, eASIC’s, Magma’s and, Flextronics’ decisions to continue working together, their products’ abilities to produce the desired results and the companies’ abilities to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's and Flextronics’ public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). The companies undertake no additional obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Copyright © 2005 eASIC Corporation. All rights reserved. All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.