Novatek in Volume Production with Three New Home Entertainment SOCs Using Tensilica HiFi Audio DSP

SANTA CLARA, Calif. USA - August 14, 2012 -Tensilica, Inc. today announced that Novatek is in volume production with three new home entertainment SOC (system-on-chip) designs that use Tensilica's HiFi Audio DSP (digital signal processor) for a high-fidelity audio listening experience. These new chips will be used in digital televisions and set-top boxes.

"We selected the HiFi Audio DSP because it was the most proven, complete solution available, with all of the audio software we needed already ported and optimized for the architecture," stated JH Chang, Senior Vice President, Novatek. "This was the right decision as we were able to quickly incorporate the HiFi Audio DSP into our designs and get these three chips into volume production."

"We're very impressed with how quickly Novatek was able to get these three chips into volume production and their growing market share in digital televisions and set-top boxes," stated Larry Przywara, Tensilica's senior director of Multimedia Marketing. "By utilizing our library of over 100 audio/voice and enhancement software packages, Novatek was able to get the software resources they needed without delay."

Tensilica's HiFi Audio DSPs are the leading licensable audio DSP IP cores, licensed by almost 50 customers including many of the top 10 semiconductor manufacturers and leading system OEMs in digital television, set-top boxes, and mobile handsets.  The HiFi Audio DSPs support over 100 audio/voice codecs and offer leading performance even for ultra-low power applications. The HiFi Audio DSPs are part of Tensilica's growing line of dataplane processors (DPUs) that efficiently do the challenging, compute, and signal processing-intensive tasks in SOC designs.

About Novatek

Novatek was established in 1997, specializing in display-centered total solutions including a full line of display driver ICs and SOCs for various consumer electronics. The Company is the world's largest supplier of display driver ICs, and is ranked as the 13th largest fabless semiconductor company in the world, as well as Taiwan's third largest fabless company in terms of sales revenue in 2011. For more information, visit http://www.novatek.com.tw/.

About Tensilica

Tensilica, Inc. is the leader in customizable dataplane processor IP cores with almost 200 core licensees. Dataplane Processor Units (DPUs) combine the best capabilities of CPUs and DSPs while delivering 10 to 100x the performance because they can be customized using Tensilica's automated design tools to meet specific signal processing performance targets. Tensilica's DPUs power SOC designs at system OEMs and seven out of the top 10 semiconductor companies for products including mobile phones, consumer electronics devices (including digital TV, Blu-ray Disc players, broadband set top boxes, digital still cameras and portable media players), computers, and storage, networking and communications equipment. For more information on Tensilica's patented, benchmark-proven DPUs visit www.tensilica.com.