Agere Systems First to Collaborate With Cadence for ASIC Design Kit That Accelerates Product Deliveries by Up to Six Months

Silicon Virtual Prototyping Supplements Traditional ASIC Handoff Model for Advanced SoC Design

ALLENTOWN, Pa., Aug. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A - News, AGR.B - News) today announced it has engaged with Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CDN - News) to provide Agere customers with an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design technology that can enable equipment manufacturers to deliver their products to market up to six months faster. The use of the Cadence tool can also help such manufacturers save hundreds of thousands of dollars in product design costs.

Agere has contracted with Cadence to provide ASIC customers with a temporary license to use Cadence's First Encounter® design tool, a complete virtual prototyping and hierarchical partitioning and placement system. Using First Encounter, the ASIC design "hand-off" package Agere receives from its customers will more closely represent the design's physical implementation and be of much higher quality than that provided in the traditional ASIC design flow. This new flow enabled by First Encounter will allow Agere to compress its back-end ASIC production schedule and accelerate delivery to customers.

"There is nothing more important to Agere's ASIC customers than getting their products to market faster," said Cindy Genther, marketing director for Agere's ASIC business. "By using Cadence's First Encounter tool, our customers have a better opportunity for first time silicon success and can get to market up to six months faster. This means a lower cash and time investment for both Agere and our customers. Ultimately, this agreement means our customers can accelerate product delivery to their customers."

First Encounter equips Agere's customers with the ability to create an accurate "virtual prototype" of the finished product, providing high-visibility over physical design issues earlier in the ASIC design cycle than current methodology. Because the First Encounter prototyping methodology more closely predicts the physical implementation of the design, Agere's customers can change their designs as late as possible in the design cycle and significantly cut down physical design intervals. Such improved predictability is increasingly important as Agere's ASIC process technology moves beyond 130 nanometer (nm) into 90 nm process geometries.

"Agere's industry-first ASIC delivery of First Encounter complements its leading capabilities such as its strong portfolio of communications IP," said Ping Chao, Cadence senior vice president and general manager of Digital IC Solutions. "It's a great way for Agere and its ASIC customers to optimize its design chain for nanometer designs."

Agere Systems is a premier provider of advanced integrated circuit (IC) solutions that access, move and store network information. Agere's IC solutions form the building blocks for a broad range of communications and computing applications. The company is the leader in providing storage solutions for hard disk drives with its read-channel chips, preamplifiers and system-on-a-chip solutions, and the No. 2 provider of Wi-Fi solutions for wireless LAN applications. For network equipment providers, Agere is a leading supplier of ICs for wired communications, network switching and access, and ATM and SONET/SDH solutions. In addition, Agere is the No. 2 supplier of application-specific ICs (ASICs) for communications applications. More information about Agere Systems is available from its Web site at http://www.agere.com.

Agere's Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements based on information available to Agere as of the date hereof. Agere's actual results could differ materially from the results stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to customer demand for our products and services, control of costs and expenses, timely completion of employment reductions and other restructuring and consolidation activities, price and product competition, keeping pace with technological change, dependence on new product development, reliance on major customers and suppliers, availability of manufacturing capacity, components and materials, general industry and market conditions and general domestic and international economic conditions including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations. For a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2001, and report on Form 10-Q for the period ending March 31, 2002. Agere disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.