NEC Electronics America Announces Agreement to Distribute VaST Electronics Virtualization Solutions for Advanced NEC Electronics Automotive Microcontroller Products

-- VaST, the leader in electronics virtualization, and NEC Electronics America, Inc., a subsidiary of NEC Electronics Corporation, the worldwide leading supplier of 32-bit microcontrollers, today announced an agreement for NEC Electronics America to distribute VaST virtualization technology with advanced automotive MCU products.

The agreement is a quantum leap forward in an effort that VaST undertook almost two years ago to fundamentally change how electronic systems are developed in the automotive industry. Beginning in May 2007, VaST instituted a series of partnerships to deliver system and processor models to several electronics suppliers and original equipment manufacturers. The earlier announced availability of NEC Electronics’ V850™-based MCU models was an important first step.

This agreement goes beyond NEC Electronics MCU model availability and includes sales and distribution of VaST electronics virtualization tools by NEC Electronics America to its customers. This agreement equips NEC Electronics America with leading virtualization tools that allow end customers to develop software for NEC Electronics microcontroller-based systems in a more productive and cost effective manner than conventional methods. NEC Electronics America’s sales team will improve their tool offering to showcase and sell their leading MCU products and in turn VaST receives a wider market reach for promotion and sales of their tools.

"With the automotive industry struggling in the current economic climate, this effort between NEC Electronics America and VaST provides an alternative by reducing the significant cost of hardware prototyping and increases the efficiency of software development," said Jim Trent, Vice President, Multipurpose Microcontroller and Automotive Group, NEC Electronics America.

"Industry-wide, electronics virtualization would significantly reduce development costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. This collaboration will bring VaST virtualization tools and NEC Electronics microcontrollers to a larger set of customers and thereby lower the industry cost structure for conducting leading edge automotive system design,” said Alain Labat, Chief Executive Officer of VaST Systems.

About VaST

VaST drives electronics virtualization. VaST fundamentally changes the electronics industry by breaking the dependency on hardware prototypes. With VaST, electronics companies develop virtual system prototypes—timing-accurate, high-speed simulation models of their electronic systems—for use in design and supply chain enablement. Using virtualization, customers develop software before hardware and enable early software development by ecosystem partners which cuts time-to-market
by 8 months or more.
VaST’s customers include worldwide leaders in automotive, consumer, and wireless markets. VaST is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with sales and support offices worldwide.
For more information, visit us at http://www.vastsystems.com

About NEC Electronics America, Inc.

NEC Electronics America, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a leading provider of semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the broadband and communications markets; system solutions for the mobile, PC, automotive and digital consumer markets; and multi-market solutions for a wide range of consumer applications. NEC Electronics America offers local manufacturing in Roseville, California, and the global manufacturing capabilities of its parent company. In the Americas, NEC Electronics America markets and sells industrial-type active-matrix LCD modules from NEC LCD Technologies, Ltd., a global leader in innovative display technologies. More information about the products offered by NEC Electronics America can be found at http://www.am.necel.com.
On a worldwide basis, NEC Electronics Corporation was the number one supplier of 32-bit MCUs in 2007 according to the Gartner Dataquest March 2008 rankings report.