TriCN Partners With Cascade For Full PCI-Express Solution

Companies' PCI Express PHY and Port Logic Core Establish Compatibility  

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - June 8, 2004 - TriCN, a leading developer of intellectual property (IP) for high-speed semiconductor interface technology, and Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, a leading provider of digital intellectual property (IP) solutions for the PCI Express market, today announced the interoperability of TriCN's PCI-Express PHY and the CascadeXpress™ PCI-Express Port Logic IP Core, providing customers with a full validated PCI-Express solution. Compatibility of the two products was proved via simulation testing of TriCN's PCI-Express PHY within the CascadeXpress IP verification environment. The combined PCI-Express PHY and Port logic core solution supports multiple lane configurations, including X1, X2, X4, X8, and X16.

TriCN's PCI-Express PHYs and CascadeXpress™ PCI-Express Port Logic IP Cores offer a powerful set of features for developers seeking to incorporate a complete PCI-Express solution into their design. TriCN's PHY's offer the most area and power efficient designs in the industry, including a true X1 lane configuration. The CascadeXpress™ PCI-Express Port Logic IP Cores have been designed with conservative timing and small die size in mind, and offer the most interoperable and complete PCI-Express Port Logic solution in the industry, with extremely low latency, and efficient overhead design to provide maximum accessible bandwidth.

"The interoperability of the TriCN and Cascade PCI-Express products is a great win for customers," said Ron Nikel, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of TriCN. "This provides a complete PCI-Express solution that customers can trust will work seamlessly in their system."

"TriCN's approach to efficient and successful interface design mirrors that of Cascade," said Robert McVay, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cascade Semiconductor Solutions. "The result is that our combined offering emphasizes small size and low overhead, which gives customers the most efficient PCI-Express solution in the market."

Availability
TriCN's PCI-Express PHY products are supported in the TSMC 130nm and the CascadeXpress™ PCI-Express Port Logic IP Cores are supported for both ASIC and FPGA applications.

About Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, Inc.
Cascade Semiconductor Solutions, Inc. is a Beaverton, Oregon based privately held company developing IP cores and highly integrated SOC-IP products for the PCI Express market. Launched by a group of experienced industry veterans, Cascade has quickly moved into a leadership position in the PCI Express IP space with its scalable, multi-lane capable PCI Express Port Logic IP (CX-PL). CascadeXpress™ technology powers the industry's 1st PCI Express compliance testing at PCI-SIG Compliance Workshops. CascadeXpress™ IP are currently shipping to Tier 1 Microprocessor, Computer system, Wireless, T&M, Communication, Storage, and ASIC design service companies. For more information, please visit our website www.cascadeip.com

About TriCN
Founded in 1997, San Francisco, California-based TriCN is a leading developer of high- performance semiconductor interface intellectual property (IP). The company provides a complete portfolio of IP for maximizing data throughput on and off the chip. All products are designed using rigorous signal integrity and timing analysis to ensure first time power-up success. Products include Base I/O libraries for pad-ring creation, high-performance memory and networking interfaces, multi-function I/O's compatible with multiple interface protocols, and multi-gigabit PHY products. TriCN's customers range from fabless semiconductor to systems companies and IDMs.

 
All trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.