picoChip receives strategic investment from Samsung

Bath, England, 18 September 2007: - picoChip today announced that Samsung has made a strategic investment in the company. The amount of the investment is undisclosed, and forms part of the $27 million of new investment D-round announced in July by picoChip which was led Highland Capital Partners. The round has brought the total company funding to $70.5 million, placing picoChip in an unrivalled position to build upon the success it has already achieved in the wireless infrastucture market.

Samsung manufactures 3G base transceiver stations and basestation controllers, as well as basestations for WiMAX. The company is one of the suppliers for Sprint’s $3bn nationwide mobile WiMAX network rollout in the USA to deploy in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence, R.I., and recently won the contract for New York.

“Samsung is a world leader in wireless infrastructure, and it is a testament to picoChip’s prominence as a silicon vendor for this market that Samsung has chosen to invest in us,” said Guillaume d'Eyssautier, president and CEO of picoChip. “The new round of funding reaffirms our leadership in multi-core DSP for advanced wireless markets with our WiMAX, HSPA and femtocell products.”

“Our strategic investment in picoChip represents Samsung's commitment to advanced wireless,' said Brian Kang, principal investment manager at Samsung Ventures America. 'picoChip is a key player with leading edge solutions for both WiMAX and femtocells, and we are delighted to be working with them as we address these growing wireless markets.'

Founded in 2000, picoChip has developed the world’s highest performance multi-core DSP, and is a supplier of complete femtocell, picocell and macrocell reference designs for WiMAX and HSPA. The company’s technology is being used by over a hundred manufacturers, including Tier 1s, in both WiMAX and 3G. picoChip femtocell customers include Axiom, ipAccess (supplying Thomson), Ubiquisys (supplying NEC and Motorola) and a number of other major OEMs and ODMs. Recently Google announced a strategic investment in Ubiquisys, who use picoChips’s HSPA femtocell product. In WiMAX, picoChip most recently won the Chip Design, Industry Innovation and Industry Choice Awards at the Best of WiMAX World Awards 2007, taking home 50% of the awards available. In addition picoChip was recently awarded a place on LIGHT READING’s prestigious “Top Ten Private Companies” list.

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Editor's Note: “picoArray” is a registered trademark of picoChip. All other trademarks and servicemarks are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contacts:

Rupert Baines, picoChip Designs Limited, Riverside Buildings, 108 Walcot Street, Bath,
BA1 5BG, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1225 469 744 E-mail: rupertb@picoChip.com
Fax: +44 (0)1225 469 767 Web: www.picoChip.com

Oliver Davies, Publitek Limited, 18 Brock Street, Bath, BA1 2LW, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1225 470 000 E-mail: oliver.davies@publitek.com
Fax: +44 (0)1225 470 047 Web: www.publitek.com

About picoChip
picoChip, located in Bath, England, is dedicated to providing innovative, flexible wireless solutions to help equipment makers minimize time-to-market, costs, and system power consumption. The company is a founder member, and is on the board of Femto Forum.

The heart of the company’s offering is a scaleable, multi-processor baseband IC that combines the computational density of a dedicated ASIC with the programmability of a traditional high end Digital Signal Processor. This radically reduces both development time and materials cost and enables the strategic goal of the “Software Defined Radio”. The company has the most comprehensive reference designs in the industry, with complete, standard-compliant solutions for both UMTS (including HSxPA) and WiMAX (802.16d upgradeable to 802.16e).

picoChip was recently awarded a place on LIGHT READING’s prestigious “Top Ten Private Companies” list.
Visit: www.picochip.c

Publisher Contact Information:

picoChip Designs Limited
+44 (0)1225 469 744
rupertb@picoChip.com

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