Tensilica Offers Free Diamond Core Software Development and Modeling Tools

SANTA CLARA, CA – March 14, 2006 – Tensilica, Inc. today announced immediate availability of free evaluation versions of the Diamond Standard Software Toolkit, the advanced software development and modeling environment for the Diamond Standard processor core family, which was announced on February 20, 2006. The Toolkit is available for immediate download from Tensilica’s web site at www.tensilica.com.

“We’re making our Diamond Toolkit available for free evaluation to prove to prospective customers how easy it is to immediately begin software profiling and code development for all six Diamond Standard processor and DSP cores,” stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica’s vice president of marketing. “This free download enables immediate evaluation of the Diamond Standard processors for suitability within a SOC (system-on-chip) design without a purchase commitment.”

Software and firmware engineers will want to explore the Diamond processor software development tools to learn how easy it is to port application code to the Diamond core processor family, and to experience the code performance and code size advantages of the Tensilica Xtensa instruction set architecture. Powerful visualization tools enable software developers to graphically view and compare profiling results.

Hardware design teams will want to take advantage of this free evaluation to experiment with the clock-cycle accurate, pipeline-modeling instruction set simulator and the associated performance modeling visualization views within the graphical user interface that show pipeline activity, cache utilization rates, and cycles spent on bus cycle activity.

The Diamond Standard Software Toolkit evaluation version includes Xtensa Xplorer - Diamond Edition, a comprehensive graphical user interface based on the popular Eclipse software environment. This user interface should be familiar and easy to navigate by most engineers. Xtensa Xplorer has been proven and refined for several years as the main user interface for Tensilica’s Xtensa configurable processor family.

The Diamond Standard Software Toolkit evaluation version also includes Tensilica’s XCC Compiler, an advanced C/C++ compiler with inter-procedural analysis, advanced loop optimizations, ability to automatically vectorize code, feedback-directed compilation and profiling-based feedback compilation; a cycle-accurate instruction set simulator, a complete GNU-based tool-chain for debugging, assembling, and linking your programs, and software libraries for the six Diamond Standard controllers, CPUs and DSPs.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of processor cores on the market today, with the six new members of the Diamond Standard processor family plus an infinite number of Xtensa configurable processor possibilities for customers requiring optimized, application-specific solutions. Tensilica’s low-power, benchmark-proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leaders in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. Tensilica also provides industry leading automated tool support for its processor families. For more information, visit www.tensilica.com.