PLDA and HARDI Electronics Forge Strategic Partnership

PLDA's PCIe IP Controller Bundled with the HARDI ASIC Prototyping System

San Jose, Calif., July 13, 2006—PLDApplications (PLDA), the leader in the PCI Express IP controller market, and HARDI Electronics, the leader in platform-based ASIC prototyping, today announced a partnership to bundle PLDA's IP controller with the HARDI ASIC Prototyping System (HAPS).

Under the terms of the agreement, HAPS customers benefit from a pre-installed, fully functional and free two-month evaluation of the PCIe IP Controller that includes a configuration Wizard and complete technical support provided directly by the IP design team.

“We evaluated several alternatives for partnering in the PCIe space,” explains Lars-Eric Lundgren, CEO of HARDI Electronics. “The robustness of PLDA’s technology, their market leading position, and their excellent reputation in the industry made them the easy choice for our IP partner.”

HAPS is a flexible high-performance prototyping system that can be expanded to any number of FPGAs to prototype an ASIC design, even those greater than 20 million gates. It's the first modular FPGA board system to offer high speed, high capacity, real-time debugging and full ASIC functionality in a prototyping environment. The latest generation of HAPS is based on the largest Xilinx Virtex-4 chips, offering better performance at lower prices than ever before.

“Now in its third generation, the HAPS prototyping system has an excellent reputation among ASIC designers for a rich feature set and fast time-to-prototyping,” says Arnaud Schleich, co-founder and VP of Marketing for PLD Applications. “The combination of a flexible, easy to use prototyping technology and world-class IP is a big win for our mutual customers. We expect the relationship to enhance our already significant share of the ASIC market for PCIe IP.”

PLDA's silicon proven PCIe IP controller has been listed on PCI-SIG's Integrators list since 2004. Today, PLDA has sold over 200 PCI Express licenses and offers two families of PCI Express IP that support x1, x4, and x8 Lanes for Root Port, Endpoint, Bridge, and Switch configurations. "PLDA is the largest provider of IP cores for the logical and transport layers of PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express," according to A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects, published by The Linley Group, Inc. Copyright 2006.

In a separate agreement, HARDI also integrates PLDA's PCIe IP controller to manage data transfer for the new PCIE-1-KIT, which includes a x1 HAPS daughter board with Philips PHY, a x4 host interface board, and a x4 PCIe cable that connects the two. The system permits a high-speed connection between the HAPS prototyping platform and a PC.

About PLDA

PLDA designs and sells a wide range of ASIC and FPGA interfacing solutions for the PCI and derivative markets (PCI Express, PCI-X, and PCI). The company offers complete solutions, including IP cores, hardware, software, consulting services, and comprehensive technical support provided directly by the IP designers. For additional information about PLD Applications, please visit http://www.plda.com.

About HARDI Electronics

Founded in 1987, HARDI Electronics is a pioneer in the field of structured HDL-design. The company’s knowledge and experience ranges from SoC design using full custom ASICs to a wide variety of designs with programmable logic. HARDI introduced its first ASIC prototyping product in 2000 and today has many successful installations in North America, Europe and Asia. The privately held company is headquartered in Sweden and was incorporated in the USA in 2005. For additional information about HARDI, please visit http://www.hardi.com.