NEWS & EVENTS

Oki Selects Forte's Cynthesizer for Creation of its Next Generation SoCs

Cynthesizer reduces Oki's design and verification time by one third

San Jose, Calif. and Tokyo- April 14, 2005 - Forte Design Systems and Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE: 6703) today announced that Oki has selected Forte's Cynthesizer behavioral synthesis product for use in designing its next generation systems-on-chip (SoCs). Cynthesizer's industry leading quality of results and immediate ability to be deployed in SoC production flows were cited as key factors in the decision.

"It has been a challenge to convert SystemC to RTL in a short period of time with low power consumption for our mobile application designs. During our testing, Forte's Cynthesizer proved it produces a gate area that is equivalent to RTL conversion done by hand, as well as reduce development time and power consumption," said Kazuhiko Maki, Silicon Platform Design Department Senior Manager at Oki Electric. "Going forward we will provide low power, high quality, and short time-to-market products to our customers by using Cynthesizer in our system LSI development; we plan to incorporate Cynthesizer into our standard design flow in the fiscal year ending March 2006."

"We are excited to have a leading semiconductor company such as Oki make this next move in adopting Cynthesizer," said Brett Cline, Forte's vice president of customer operations and services. "We are especially pleased that Oki has already demonstrated Cynthesizer's quality of results in production designs. This is further evidence of the growing momentum of both high level design and Cynthesizer in today's IC design market."

About Forte Cynthesizer
Forte's Cynthesizer significantly reduces the time needed to create complex chips and systems by automatically generating high-quality RTL designs from high-level algorithms. Cynthesizer is silicon proven with uncompromising quality of results that often exceed hand coded RTL. It is the only behavioral synthesis product that offers designers a complete environment including synthesis, verification, and co-simulation. Cynthesizer has been used on over 75 designs and is in production use in many of the largest systems and semiconductor companies worldwide.

About Forte Design Systems
Forte Design Systems is a leading provider of software products that enable design at a higher-level of abstraction. Forte's innovative behavioral synthesis technology allows design teams creating complex electronic systems from algorithmic designs using ASICs, FPGAs, and SoCs to significantly reduce their overall design and verification time. Forte is headquartered at 100 Century Center Court, San Jose, CA 95112. For more information, visit us at www.ForteDS.com.

About Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Founded in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. With the corporate vision, "Oki, Network Solutions for a Global Society," Oki provides top-quality products, technologies and solutions to its customers through its info-telecom system business, semiconductor business and printer business. All three businesses function as a collective force to create exciting new products and technologies that satisfy a spectrum of customer needs in various markets. Visit Oki's global web site at www.oki.com.