Toshiba Joins OCP-IP

New Governing Steering Committee Member Further Enhances OCP-IP Working Groups and Increases Organization’s Prominence in Asia

PORTLAND, ORE. — March 1, 2004 — Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) today announced that the Toshiba Corporation has joined the organization. Toshiba is a Governing Steering Committee (GSC) member and is a participant in OCP-IP’s Working Groups. As a member of the GSC, Toshiba joins a highly talented team drawn from GSC members including Nokia, STMicroelectronics, Sonics Inc., Texas Instruments, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), and other industry-leading companies. Working Groups are charged with the task of developing enhancements and support for OCP, and addressing the future needs of the membership in the use of the specification. The addition of Toshiba to the membership roster further strengthens OCP-IP’s influence in Asia.

“Independence from proprietary interfaces, buses and other technologies are key factors in shortening product lifecycles and continuing complex SoC design,” said Takashi Yoshimori, technology executive at Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. “OCP-IP is the industry leader in this effort and offers the first truly open effort making plug-and-play SoC design a reality. We are proud to support OCP-IP and further our common goals.”

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) has already successfully implemented Open Core Protocol (OCP) in their SoCMosaic. SocMosaic is a new platform-based design approach that can reduce time to market for a customizable System-on-a-Chip (SoC) to as little as six months. SoCMosaic custom chip achieves rapid customization of complex SoC designs by using commodity IP blocks, standardized interfaces, a scalable interconnect system, a register-transfer level (RTL) testbench and high-level, cycle-accurate C simulation.

“We welcome Toshiba to the GSC. They clearly understand the need for an industry socket standard for intellectual property cores that is not limited to application-specific usage,” said Ian Mackintosh, president of OCP-IP. “The collective expertise of both our existing and new GSC members gives us unequalled talent that adds to our ability to provide user-driven enhancements to OCP technology and continued support for the future.”

About OCP-IP
The OCP International Partnership Association, Inc. (OCP-IP) was announced in December 2001 to promote and support the open core protocol (OCP) as the complete socket standard that ensures rapid creation and integration of interoperable virtual components. OCP-IP’s Governing Steering Committee participants are: Nokia [NYSE: NOK], Texas Instruments [NYSE: TXN], STMicroelectronics [NYSE: STM], United Microelectronics Corporation [NYSE: UMC], Sonics, and other industry leading companies. OCP-IP is a non-profit corporation delivering the first fully supported, openly licensed core-centric protocol that comprehensively fulfills system-level integration requirements. The OCP facilitates IP core reusability and reduces design time and risk, along with manufacturing costs for SoC designs. VSIA endorses the OCP socket, and OCP-IP is an Adoption Group of the VSI Alliance. For additional background and membership information, visit www.OCPIP.org.

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