Colorado Springs, Colorado - May 14, 2000 -- Simtek Corporation, provider of the world's fastest re-programmable nonvolatile semiconductor memories, announced its acquisition of Colorado Springs based /www.ilsi.com/ Integrated Logic Systems, Inc. (ILSI).
ILSI specializes in providing low cost metal programmable gate array (MPGA) replacements for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) supplied by companies such as Xilinx, Altera, Actel and Lattice. The total market for FPGAs is approaching $3 billion, spanning a wide range of applications, including data communications, telecommunications, computer products, office automation and industrial controls. FPGAs are useful for new system development because their programmability allows changes to be easily made. Companies often continue to use expensive FPGAs in production because of high conversion costs to replace these devices with less expensive non-programmable parts. ILSI has developed chip architectures that remove these high costs along with proprietary engineering tools that support easy conversion of the FPGA designs to ILSI's MPGAs. This combination provides manufacturers with a lower-cost production solution once their development is complete. ILSI supports a family of products capable of replacing up to 100,000 gate FPGA's. They can also include up to 40,000 bits of memory and up to 324 input/output pins, providing opportunities in a very wide range of system applications.
"ILSI has spent the past 2 years developing its current product capabilities and introducing its products to the marketplace. We have developed a loyal customer base with early production shipments and are now ready to expand into much broader markets," stated Hugh Chapman, ILSI's president. "Joining forces with Simtek will provide the launching pad for highly accelerated growth."
With the acquisition of ILSI, Simtek will operate their logic products group as a profit center in parallel with the memory group. The first priority will be to expand the market for FPGA to MPGA conversions. As this is accomplished the logic design infrastructure will allow Simtek to expand into logic-based standard products. These product developments will be further defined as the infrastructure is built up.
"Simtek is currently in a very strong growth pattern for its nvSRAM product line, providing a timely opportunity to leverage our sales, marketing and operations infrastructure by adding the technology and engineering capabilities that ILSI brings to the organization. Our products are very complementary and will support each other in many types of applications throughout our customer base," said Douglas Mitchell, Simtek's president and CEO. "This is our first effort to expand beyond our nvSRAM roots and to build a logic-based product capability. These combined technologies will ultimately allow us to support applications in high growth markets that neither of us can support today. Adding capabilities through acquisitions or strategic partnerships is a quick and efficient way to grow, and it's gratifying to take our first step in this direction with the exciting opportunity that ILSI brings to the mix."
About Simtek
Simtek Corporation delivers the world's fastest re-programmable nonvolatile semiconductor memories and the industry's most cost-effective FPGA to ASIC conversions. Information on Simtek products can be obtained from its web page http://www.simtek.com/. The company is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with international sales and marketing channels. Simtek is listed under the symbol SRAM on the OTC Electronic Bulletin Board.
Forward-Looking Statements are omitted