Press Release

Oxford, UK, September 18, 2000 - Tensilica® Ltd, the leading supplier of configurable microprocessor core intellectual property (IP), announced today the appointment of RepDesign as sales representatives for the German and French markets effective immediately.

According to Bill Campbell, Tensilica’s European Sales Director, 'With the appointment of RepDesign, we have dramatically increased our presence in the key French and German markets where we are enjoying increasing interest in our Xtensa™ application-specific processor. Their market knowledge and customer contact was a key factor in reaching this agreement.

RepDesign’s offices are located in Munich and Paris. Heading the German Tensilica team is Florian Fleckenstein, Manager, Sales and Marketing and heading the French Tensilica team is Philippe Moniot, Sales Manager.

In the United Kingdom, the company has appointed its first Application Engineers who will be based at the firm’s European headquarters. The new AEs are Marcus Binning, Duncan Graham, and John Massingham.

Bill Campbell, said, "This technical team sets the standard for Tensilica in Europe. Their combined experience will enable our European customers to exploit the full potential of our Xtensa configurable processor technology so that they can implement and execute the best cost/performance SOC designs."

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Marcus Binning spent the past 3 years with formal verification leader Chrysalis Symbolic Design introducing FV technology to major European Companies. Previously, he spent 5 years with simulation acceleration/emulation company Zycad in a variety of technical roles. Previous to Zycad, he held ASIC design positions with Gothic Crellon and holds an Honours degree in Electronics from the University of Bristol.

Duncan Graham joins Tensilica from the Design and Development group of Hitachi - Europe where he spent the last 5 years in various design roles. These ranged from application reference systems design (PDA, ATM and DVB) to, more recently, developing system solutions for customers and designing test platforms. Previously, he spent four years at VSEL, a leading UK defence company, designing embedded software and digital hardware in the combat systems department. Graham holds an Honours B.Eng from Brunel University.

John Massingham spent 4 years at LSI Logic, UK as Software engineer in the Set Top Box group where he developed video drivers, OSG drivers and verification systems. Prior to LSI, he was a DSP AE/FAE with Texas Instruments working with most of that firm’s DSPs. He is a graduate of Aberdeen University, and holds B.Eng, and PhD degrees.

About Tensilica

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the fast-growing market for application-specific microprocessor cores and software development tools for high volume, embedded systems. Using the company's proprietary Xtensa Processor Generator, system-on-a-chip (SOC) designers can develop a processor subsystem hardware design and a complete software development tool environment tailored to their specific requirements in hours.

Tensilica's solutions provide a proven, easy-to-use, methodology that enables designers to achieve optimum application performance in minimum design time. The Company has over 100 engineers engaged in research, development, and customer support from its offices in Santa Clara, California, Waltham, Massachusetts, Princeton, N.J., Houston, Texas, Oxford, U.K. and Yokohama, Japan.

Tensilica is headquartered in Santa Clara, California (95054) at 3255-6 Scott Boulevard, and can be reached at (408) 986-8000 or via www.tensilica.com on the World Wide Web.

"Tensilica" is a registered trademark and "Xtensa" is a trademark belonging to Tensilica Inc.