MIPS Mips Technologies, Inc. (MM)

Express Logic, Inc., the worldwide leader in royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOS), and MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIPS), a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer and business applications, today announced the availability of Express Logic's ThreadX RTOS for the MIPS32(R) 24K(R) and 4KE(TM) processor core families. ThreadX, an already popular RTOS in the consumer devices market with over 200 million electronic product deployments, is a natural fit for the high-performance 24K processor core, which has strong appeal in computationally demanding applications such as consumer devices and networking. The MIPS32 4KE family, gives licensees the flexibility to optimize applications for performance, size or power consumption, thereby reducing overall system costs. In addition, the MIPS32 24K and 4KE core families offer the broadest industry support of middleware, algorithms and tools for a variety of embedded applications. To provide additional assistance for consumer product developers in bringing their products to market faster, Express Logic ported its NetX(TM) TCP/IP stack and its FileX(TM) MS-DOS compatible embedded file system to the MIPS32 Architecture. ThreadX is a small-footprint, highly efficient RTOS used by developers to manage the multiple operations of today's sophisticated consumer electronics devices. ThreadX is 100% royalty-free, making it ideal for high-volume consumer products where minimum manufacturing cost is a must. In fact, in a recent (June, 2005) CMP survey, ThreadX was shown to be one of the most widely-preferred royalty-free RTOS among embedded developers worldwide. Coupled with the outstanding performance of the MIPS32 24K and 4KE processor core families, this combination makes an ideal platform for development of high-performance, low-cost, high-volume, consumer electronics products that must reach the market quickly. "We were thrilled to hear that existing MIPS architecture licensees and new consumer device design-win customers made a strong demand for ThreadX on the 24K and 4KE cores," noted William E. Lamie, president of Express Logic. "We are happy to work with MIPS Technologies to port our popular ThreadX RTOS, our NetX TCP/IP stack and our FileX file system to the MIPS32 Architecture for these customers. Our mutual consumer device development customers now have an ideal combination of high performance and low cost on which to base their latest products." MIPS Technologies' 24K core family takes advantage of the highest performance 32-bit cores in the embedded industry while minimizing design time and reducing product costs. Designed to power through graphics, Java and demanding code and with features like an ultrafast multiply, intelligent caches, floating point support and the CorExtend(TM) capability -- which allows users to supercharge application performance by defining and adding their own instructions -- the 24K family is the ideal solution for digital and interactive television, set-top boxes, DVD and other performance-driven applications. "The MIPS32 24K core family was designed to give application developers greater performance and resources for their embedded applications. We are pleased that these resources now include support from the ThreadX RTOS," said Russ Bell, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies. "With the ThreadX RTOS support, licensees of the 24K who are designing advanced systems for the consumer market can now benefit from its efficient management of multiple operations." ThreadX development for the MIPS32 24K and 4KE core families is supported by the MIPS(R) SDE development tools, and the First Silicon Solutions (FS2) System Navigator family of JTAG debug probes with advanced features such as PDTrace and now supporting the ThreadX kernel-aware debugger. ThreadX is fully compatible with these tools, and prepackaged with makefiles for quick out-of-the-box development, leading to faster time to market. "We worked closely with the Express Logic team to match the System Navigator probe features to the ThreadX RTOS. The integration of the FS2 System Navigator tool with the ThreadX debugger will provide a robust set of tools with kernel-aware debugging for developers building ThreadX applications on the MIPS32 24K and 4KE processor cores," noted Rick Leatherman, president of FS2. Shipping and Availability ThreadX, NetX and FileX are available immediately for the MIPS32 24K and 4KE core families. Royalty-free licenses start at $12,500. About MIPS Technologies MIPS Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer and business applications. The company drives the broadest architectural alliance that is delivering 32- and 64-bit embedded RISC solutions. The company licenses its intellectual property to semiconductor companies, ASIC developers and system OEMs. MIPS Technologies and its licensees offer the widest range of robust, scalable processors in standard, custom, semi-custom and application-specific products. The company is based in Mountain View, CA, and can be reached at +1 (650) 567-5000 or www.mips.com. About Express Logic Headquartered in San Diego, CA, Express Logic offers the most advanced run-time solution for deeply embedded applications, including the popular ThreadX(R) RTOS, the high-performance NetX(TM) TCP/IP stack, the FileX(TM) embedded MS-DOS compatible file system, and the USBX(TM) Host/Device USB protocol stack. All products from Express Logic include full source-code and have no run-time royalties. For more information about Express Logic solutions, please visit www.expresslogic.com, call 1-888-THREADX, or email inquires to sales@expresslogic.com. ThreadX and FileX are registered trademarks, and NetX, CANX, USBX, preemption-threshold, picokernel, and UDP fast path technology, are trademarks of Express Logic, Inc. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.