Agere Systems Licenses ARM11 Processor Family for Integration Into High- Performance Networking System-on-a-Chip Applications

ALLENTOWN, Pa., Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Agere Systems today announced it has added a key technology to its extensive intellectual property (IP) portfolio by licensing the latest ARM11(TM) family cores for use in its system on a chip (SoC), application- specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and application-specific standard (ASSP) products. This latest licensing agreement is a continuation of the long-term relationship that exists between the two companies.

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Agere is a leading provider of ARM(R) technology in its semiconductor products. Last year, Agere integrated eight ARM966E-S(TM) processors into a single chip, more than any other company, allowing the company to provide a substantially more powerful solution to a leading provider of wireless base stations. The ARM11 family's increased architectural efficiency and its ability to reach higher maximum frequencies are important to address Agere's storage area networking, hard disk drive storage, consumer, imaging and printing, wireless, and networking systems microprocessing needs.

"Agere is very pleased with the addition of the ARM11 family to its long list of ARM cores and with our continued strong relationship with ARM," said Necip Sayiner, vice president of Agere's Enterprise and Networking division. "Our ASIC design team has done performance benchmarking on the ARM11 family and we feel confident in Agere's ability to integrate this key element of our roadmap into immediate designs and provide our customers with the advantage of an experienced ARM user. Adding the ARM11 family to our vast experience of ARM integration will allow Agere to expand our leadership in the enterprise and networking markets."

The ARM11 family is based on the ARMv6 32/16-bit architecture and features the ARM TrustZone(TM) extension for improved device security and the ARM Thumb(R)-2 instruction set enhancement for high performance, high density code. ARM11 family cores achieve high frequencies (335-550MHz) without compromising ARM's leadership in silicon area and power efficiency. With DSP and SIMD extensions for media and filtering algorithms and configurable instruction and data caches, ARM11 provides clear advantages to end users. "Agere Systems is a leader in integrating a high number of ARM processors into a single SoC," said John Cornish, director of product marketing, ARM. "The addition of the ARM11 family to Agere's long list of licensed ARM IP will enable them to address the high performance requirement of a wide range of emerging embedded applications."

Agere has licenses for a range of ARM cores, from the ARM7(TM) family to the ARM11 family, and can provide extremely fast time to market for new ASIC designs in 130 and 90 nanometer process technologies.

Agere Systems is a global leader in semiconductors for storage, wireless data, and public and enterprise networks. The company's chips and software power a broad range of computing and communications applications, from cell phones, PCs, PDAs, hard disk drives and gaming devices to the world's most sophisticated wireless and wireline networks. Agere's customers include the top manufacturers of consumer electronics, communications and computing equipment. Agere's products connect people to information and entertainment at home, at work and on the road -- making personal broadband a reality.

ARM and Thumb are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. ARM7, ARM966E-S, ARM11 and TrustZone are trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; ARM France SAS; ARM China Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; and ARM Belgium N.V.

CONTACT: Steven Goldsmith of Agere Systems, +1-610-712-6737 (office),
+1-484-553-0419 (mobile), goldsmith@agere.com

Web site: http://www.agere.com/