SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 20, 1998 – QED, Inc., a leading supplier of high-end embedded microprocessor solutions, today announced the RM52x1^TM MIPS® RISC microprocessor family. The new QED product family includes the RM5231^TM , RM5261^TM and RM5271^TM . In just over a year, QED has doubled the system performance of the RM52xx family of processors and continued the company's legacy of providing workstation-class superscalar embedded microprocessor performance at industry-leading prices.

The RM52x1 family is targeted at high-performance embedded applications such as Internet terminals, advanced set-top boxes, network routers/switches/hubs, communications devices, xDSL MODEMS, Windows-based terminals, "thin" servers, automobile navigation systems, printers and games. The RM52x1 product family continues to provide what customers desire the most: the ability to quickly design products that get their embedded systems into production. QED provides a solution with binary level compatibility without recompile and hardware pinout compatibility between the product family members.

"We are excited to announce another new family of high-performance, low-cost microprocessors. The RM52x1 family follows on the heels of our popular RM52xx family and provides our customers with more than double the system performance of the current RM52xx family," said Rick Kepple, QED vice president of marketing. "Both the RM52x1 and RM52xx families offer customers an unprecedented range of price/performance options to quickly develop their products. We have customers who are developing one platform for two versions of their products, e.g. one version with a RM5230 processor and the higher performance RM5231 processor that dramatically reduces time-to-market, engineering NRE, manufacturing time and field support costs. Today, this can only be done with the software and hardware compatibility provided by the QED RM52xx, RM52x1 and RM7000 families."

The RM52x1 Product Family Description

The RM52x1 family features a maximum of 345 Dhrystone 2.1 MIPS 266MHz 64-bit MIPS RISC CPU with a high-performance 125MHz memory interface capable of 1000 MBytes per second peak transfer rates. The family also uses a superscalar instruction issue architecture that increases processor efficiency for both the CPU and overall system performance. This architecture enables one integer and one floating point instruction to be processed within one microprocessor clock cycle, thereby achieving higher system performance without increasing clock speed. In addition, customers find a significant system performance improvement with the large 32KB instruction and 32KB data caches.

The RM52x1 family uses the MIPS IV Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) with DSP instruction (multiply-add, 3-operand multiply) extensions to enhance signal processing, e.g. soft-MODEM or other commonly used DSP algorithms. The MIPS IV ISA is a superset of the MIPS I-III ISA now currently sold by many vendors today.

The RM5231 is the 32-bit memory interface version of the family. The RM5261 is the 64-bit memory interface version, and the RM5271 has a 64-bit memory interface with an integrated, on-chip secondary cache controller.

Support for RM52x1 Family

QED is supporting embedded designers' requirements with a wide range of software and hardware tools for the RM52x1 family. Given software compatibility with the RM52xx family, all of the RM52xx software tools run without modification on the RM52x1 family. This includes operating compatibility with Microsoft Windows® CE, Wind River Systems' VxWorks, OpenBSD, and Linux. A wide range of software and hardware development tools are also available to support the RM52x1 family from Algorithmics, Ltd., AltoCom, Corelis, EPI, Galileo Technology and the Free-Software-Foundation (GNU).

Packaging, Availability and Pricing

The RM5231, RM5261 and RM5271 products are available now, with production volumes scheduled for Q498. The RM5231 is available up to 250MHz in a 128-pin Power-Quad^TM package with prices starting at $26 in 10,000-piece quantities. The RM5261 is available up to 266MHz in a 208-pin Power-Quad package with prices starting at $45 in 10,000-piece quantities. The RM5271 is available up to 266MHz in a 304-pin SBGA package with prices starting at $54 in 10,000-piece quantities.

About Quantum Effect Design, Inc.

Quantum Effect Design, Inc., founded in 1991, designs, develops and markets high-performance, cost-effective, market-driven embedded microprocessor solutions. The company designed and developed many of the 64-bit MIPS microprocessors including the popular R4600^TM, R4700^TM, R4650^TM, R4640^TM, R5000^TM and under its own "RISCMark^TM " label, the RM5230^TM, RM5260^TM, RM5270^TM, RM5231^TM, RM5261^TM, RM5271^TM and RM7000^TM.

Quantum Effect Design's RM52xx, RM52x1 and RM7000 product families include 32- and 64-bit embedded microprocessors targeted at emerging and fast-growing markets such as internetworking, printers, games, Windows® CE-based devices, Internet terminals, advanced digital set-top boxes, cable modems and other high-speed communications devices.

Company headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California. Telephone: 408/565-0300. QED World Wide Web site: http://www.qedinc.com

MIPS is a registered trademark and R5000 a trademark of MIPS Technologies, Inc. R4600, R4700, R4650, and R4640 are trademarks of Integrated Device Technology, Inc. RISCMark, RM5230, RM5260, RM5270, RM52xx, RM5231, RM5261, RM5271, RM52x1 and RM7000 are trademarks of Quantum Effect Design, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.