FS2 JOINS NEXUS 5001™ FORUM

Global standard for Embedded Debugging

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2005 -- First Silicon Solutions (FS2®) announced today at the Embedded Systems Conference that it has taken a major step forward in joining the NEXUS 5001™ FORUM to promote standardized debug interfaces for use in debugging microprocessors.

This is a growing industry effort to cut the time to market of new embedded systems. The Nexus Standard (IEEE-ISTO Nexus 5001) is a standard debug protocol available from multiple chipmakers, that allow companies to reduce development time and expense when migrating between architectures. This initiative develops a standard for embedded processor development tool interfaces designed to improve quality, mitigate risk and speed time-to-market.

Nexus 5001 Forum Standard

IEEE-ISTO 5001 is an open industry standard that provides a general-purpose interface for the software development and debug of embedded processors. As advances in semiconductor and system design continue, embedded applications are using higher-performance embedded processors. Efficient use of these embedded processors requires software and hardware development tools that can easily access critical processor functionality. Standardization on this interface benefits customers' reuse of their Nexus 5001™ compliant development tools on compliant processor architectures.

FS2 joins Freescale Semiconductor, dSpace, Ford Motor, GM, IAR Systems, Motorola, Green Hills Software, ST Microelectronics, Metrowerks, Windriver Systems and Visteon among others, building this worldwide consortium.

About First Silicon Solutions (FS2)

FS2 specializes in custom silicon IP, design services and OCI® (On-Chip Instrumentation) development tools for programming, testing and debug of embedded systems in FPGA, SoC, SOPC, ASSP and ASIC devices. FS2 products enable silicon vendors and their customers to develop and more effectively market their products, reduce development cycles, allowing them to focus on delivering all the potential of the system on silicon. Additional information about FS2 is available at http://www.fs2.com.

###