Sandbridge Selects Barcelona's Analog Solutions to Speed Up Time-to-Market and Increase Flexibility

Update: Barcelona has been bought by Synopsys

Newark, Calif., October 09, 2003 - Barcelona Design Inc., the leading provider of analog synthesis solutions, today announced that Sandbridge Technologies, developer of fully programmable software-defined-radio (SDR) chipsets for multimode, multi-function wireless handheld devices, has licensed its analog synthesis solution for the fast creation of PLL circuits.

"Barcelona's solutions have the scalability and flexibility we were looking for," said Gary Nacer, Director of Engineering at Sandbridge. "Because we serve the wireless handset market, power is of ultimate concern. Barcelona Design's synthesis solutions can generate full-custom PLLs, which satisfy our tight power budget while still meeting required high-performance specifications."

With Barcelona's synthesis solutions, Sandbridge will be able to improve flexibility by having access to optimal high-performance PLL circuits targeted to their specifications very quickly. The PLLs will be generated using Barcelona's PLL synthesizer for the TSMC 0.13 µm "G" process, which can generate clocking circuits up to 2 GHz, from user-specification to GDSII layout, within a day. Sandbridge will use the circuits in its new SandBlaster™ DSP products for the wireless terminal market.

"After being adopted by several design technology groups within key large semiconductor IDMs and foundries in the past months, and other fabless companies notably in the portable multimedia and network processor spaces, we are extremely pleased to have been chosen by a leader in the communications segment," said Ariel Sella, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Barcelona Design. "The increasing adoption of Barcelona's analog solutions is evidence of the tremendous scalability of our technology and of the broad application range covered by our topologies."

About Sandbridge Technologies
Sandbridge Technologies, Inc. is a leading fabless semiconductor company that develops and markets software-defined radio (SDR) baseband processors for advanced wireless/mobile terminals. Sandbridge provides its customers tremendous competitive value in the global cellular marketplace through its exceptionally cost effective, ultra-low power technology based on its breakthrough patented SandBlaster™ architecture. Sandbridge semiconductor products uniquely enable fully-C-programmable SDR multi-standard, multi-protocol wireless communications solutions to energize multimedia handset products. For more information please visit: www.sandbridgetech.com.

About Barcelona Design, Inc.
Barcelona is the first and only vendor delivering real analog synthesis solutions to SoC designers, allowing semiconductor companies to break time-to-market bottlenecks and meet the explosive demand for analog-in-SoC. Real analog synthesis is the fusion of design expertise and novel design automation into readily synthesizable circuit models. Unlike merchant and in-house analog IP, synthesizable analog circuits offer dramatic return on assets due to their process-portability and broad applications range. Compared to traditional analog design tools, analog synthesis increases productivity by orders of magnitude because it is always on time and on spec with minimal labor and capital expenditures. The company offers silicon-proven Op Amp, PLL and Data Converter synthesis models on numerous processes, including foundry partners TSMC and UMC, and IDM processes. Barcelona's customers include Analog Devices, Matsushita, ST Microelectronics and Toshiba. Barcelona's investors include Sequoia Capital, Foundation Capital, Crosslink Capital and Joe Costello, former CEO of Cadence Design Systems. The firm is headquartered in Newark, CA. For more information please visit www.barcelonadesign.com.