Lattice Announces Availability of Serial RapidIO Core from Mercury Computer Systems

-- LatticeSC Extreme Performance FPGA Family
Provides High-Performance and Low-Power for Serial RapidIO Applications --

HILLSBORO, OR - October 23, 2006 - Lattice Semiconductor (NASDAQ: LSCC) today announced that Mercury Computer, a computing solutions provider to government, defense, energy, medical and telecommunications providers, has ported its high-performance Serial RapidIO® Intellectual Property (IP) product line, consisting of x1 and x4 endpoint IP cores, to the LatticeSC™ family of 90nm (nanometer) Extreme Performance™ FPGAs. In addition, Mercury has joined Lattice's ispLeverCORE™ Connections IP partner program. Working together, Mercury and Lattice will develop and deliver complete system solutions for mutual customers requiring high-performance Serial RapidIO connectivity supported by Lattice’s FPGA product families.

Mercury achieved its target performance of 12.5 Gbit/s with a comfortable guardband on the LatticeSC family by taking advantage of the clock boosting technology incorporated within Lattice’s ispLEVER® version 6.0 SP1 software design tool suite. This feature automatically optimizes setup and clock-to-output times in register-to-register paths to improve timing performance. The Mercury core also takes advantage of the Serial RapidIO protocol support embedded in the LatticeSC devices’ powerful Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS), specifically the complete PCS/PMA layers of the Serial RapidIO Rev 1.2 specification blocks.

“Our partnership with Mercury underscores Lattice’s continued commitment to deliver ‘More of the Best’ solutions to our customers who demand full-featured connectivity coupled with excellent performance and low power,” said Stan Kopec, Lattice corporate vice president of marketing. “Lattice is pleased to work with Mercury, a recognized leader in Serial RapidIO solutions, and we see significant opportunity in many chip-to-chip, board-to-board and system-to-system applications, especially where multiple protocols are involved. The pairing of Mercury’s proven world-class Serial RapidIO core with the LatticeSC devices’ exceptional FPGA capabilities provides an outstanding platform for new customer designs.”

“Mercury’s proven Serial RapidIO core, combined with the outstanding SERDES performance, low power and built-in hard logic capabilities of LatticeSC FPGAs, delivers a powerful value proposition for Serial RapidIO designers,” said Tracy Richardson, Director of the Silicon Solutions Group in the Advanced Solutions business unit at Mercury. “Our core technology has been extensively deployed in endpoint and switch applications in the networking, communications and embedded markets, all of which require high performance FPGA technology with advanced SERDES capability. Lattice delivers on these requirements.”

A co-founder and steering committee member of the RapidIO Trade Association, Mercury is an IP provider of Serial RapidIO technology, as well as a system solution developer of Serial RapidIO computing platforms for networking, embedded, and storage applications. It has hardware-validated the x1 and x4 configurations of the core using the LatticeSC Communications Board with the Lattice LFSC25 device. These cores operate with significant timing margin in lower cost LatticeSC speed grades, so designers can optimize system cost and be confident they can easily implement the cores to meet timing requirements in the most demanding applications.

Over the last two years, Mercury has established itself as the leading provider of system-level IP for Serial RapidIO interfaces, and has successfully demonstrated IP working in a range of silicon technologies, including FPGA, structured ASIC and ASIC.

About the Mercury Serial RapidIO Core

The Serial RapidIO Core is a complete high-performance, high-function core based on an industry-standard, high-performance packet-based interconnect technology. It incorporates a logical layer, a transport layer and a physical layer, and supports input/output and message-passing logical layer standards. It is completely compliant with the RapidIO 1.2 specification.

With the adoption of Serial Rapid IO endpoints in FPGAs, DSPs and microprocessors, and switch fabrics, the IP offered by Mercury is ideal for creating superior time-to-market solutions. The applications for this IP are numerous, including creation of end-to-end solutions. Designers can create endpoints and also easily implement interfaces from proprietary/standard buses to Serial Rapid IO, or create multiport switches to aggregate other Serial Rapid IO inputs.

About LatticeSC Extreme Performance FPGAs

Announced in February 2006, LatticeSC Extreme Performance FPGAs deliver the highest performance and most robust feature set of any programmable logic product in the industry. The LatticeSC FPGA combines up to thirty-two 3.8 Gbps SERDES channels with an innovative Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) to provide a breadth of support for interface protocols including Serial RapidIO, PCI Express, Ethernet, Fiber Channel, XAUI and SONET/SDH. Source synchronous I/O standards such as RapidIO, HyperTransport, SPI4.2, SFI-4, UTOPIA, XGMII and CSIX, and memory standards including SDR, DDR1, DDR2, QDR2 and RLDRAM are implemented with dedicated PURESPEED™ I/O logic that delivers up to 2 Gbps parallel I/O performance, the fastest in the industry. The LatticeSCM™ devices also include exclusive MACO™ (Masked Array for Cost Optimization) pre-engineered IP in structured ASIC blocks for low cost and low power system-level integration.

LatticeSC device sizes range from 15,000 to 115,000 Look-up Tables (LUTs) with up to 7.8 Megabits of block RAM on a single chip. A variety of family members are currently available including the LatticeSC15, LatticeSC25 and LatticeSC80.

About Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRCY) is the leading supplier of high-performance embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing computer systems. Mercury’s products play a critical role in a wide range of applications, transforming sensor data to information for analysis and interpretation. In military reconnaissance and surveillance platforms, the Company’s systems process real-time radar, sonar and signals intelligence data. Mercury’s systems are also used in state-of-the-art medical diagnostic imaging devices including MRI, PET and digital X-ray, and in semiconductor imaging applications including photomask generation and wafer inspection. Mercury provides advanced 3D image processing and visualization software and optimized systems to diverse end markets including life sciences, geosciences and simulation. The Company also provides radio frequency (RF) products for enhanced communications capabilities in military and commercial applications.

Based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Mercury serves customers in North America, Europe and Asia through its direct sales force and a network of subsidiaries and distributors. Visit Mercury on the web at http://www.mc.com/

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, Lattice (& design), L (& design), LatticeSC, LatticeSCM, Extreme Performance, ispLEVER, ispLeverCORE, PURESPEED, MACO and specific product designations are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Lattice Semiconductor Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.
GENERAL NOTICE: Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective holders.

For more information contact:
Brian Kiernan, Corporate Communications Manager
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation
brian.kiernan@latticesemi.com
voice: (503) 268-8739
fax: (503) 268-8193

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