INDUSTRY

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation, the leader in System Interconnect, today announced it has signed an agreement with Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC), under which it will receive a seven million dollar investment to accelerate the research and development of next-generation RapidIO System Interconnect products. "This investment will enable Tundra to build on the proven success of our RapidIO System Interconnect capability. We see this as an endorsement of the viability of RapidIO as the leading interconnect standard for embedded systems," said Jim Roche, President and CEO of Tundra, "This investment in innovation demonstrates that Canada is a global leader in its commitment to the development of new technologies." As the leading interconnect technology for embedded systems, the RapidIO standard addresses the industry's need for reliability, increased bandwidth, and faster speeds in high-performance intra-system interconnect. Tundra joins other industry leaders such as: Alcatel, AMCC, Freescale Semiconductor, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies and Texas Instruments, in supporting the RapidIO standard. Tundra's RapidIO products deliver the performance, power and configurability that embedded designers need to build reliable, high-speed communications systems in wireless infrastructure and networking applications. Tundra is the industry leader in the development of RapidIO System Interconnect and is the first to bring RapidIO switches to market. Tundra's current product portfolio includes the Tsi500, a parallel RapidIO multi- port switch, and the Tsi568A and Tsi564A, the industry's first serial RapidIO switches. In addition, customers can access comprehensive design support tools, such as the Tundra Serial RapidIO Development Platform and the Tundra Hardware Interoperability Platform II. These development platforms, combined with other easily accessible design support tools for the RapidIO product family, provide customers with flexible and rapid prototyping capability, and enable customers to design next-generation systems faster. This Technology Partnerships Canada investment is repayable on a royalty basis, with the level of repayment being conditional on the success in the marketplace of the technologies supported by the R&D initiatives. Tundra has received two previous investments from TPC. Tundra has fully repaid the first investment and has begun repaying the second. The TPC investment will not alter any previous guidance given to investors. Tundra does not expect that the investment or the requirement to pay royalties will have a significant effect upon product margins.