Boulder, Colorado, November 30, 2006 - Target Compiler Technologies (www.retarget.com), the leader in application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) design tools, announced today that the company is expanding its reach to the United States and Canada. To lead the effort, Target has recruited Steve Cox to act as Vice President of Business Development for North America. The expansion is a key milestone for the company, as it marks ten years of delivering market proven tools that speed the design, programming, and verification of custom processor cores. Such processor cores are used in applications ranging from wireless and wired communications to mobile/personal electronics to multimedia and gaming.

“We have been looking for the right time to expand our reach into the North American market,” said Gert Goossens, co-founder and CEO of Target. “Although Target has been serving important customers in North America and Asia, historically our largest customer base has been in Europe. However, there has been a surge of interest lately in North America, primarily driven by the emergence of multi-core systems-on-chip for the telecom and multimedia markets. With that, all we needed was to find the right person to help us grow the business. Based on Steve’s history of achievements in the industry and our own interactions with him, I am confident that we’ll be able to repeat Target’s European success stories in the North American market.”

Target’s ASIP design tools are used by engineers to design, program, and verify custom processor cores. Such cores are typically used to offload computationally intensive algorithms from an existing embedded processor. Alternatively, such cores can be deployed in place of hardwired logic, providing software programmable “wiggle room” later in the design process to address algorithmic changes or functional defects.

“The configurable processor marketplace is hot right now,” said Steve Cox. “Besides the usual need to manage mounting pressures with respect to schedule, development cost and complexity, design teams must now find new ways to achieve performance advances without sacrificing power and cost budgets. Designers are increasingly turning to configurable processors or ASIPs as a way to deliver the needed performance while meeting aggressive schedule, cost and power constraints. Combining this market dynamic with Target’s proven product offering and quality customer base yields an opportunity too good to pass up.”
 

Steve Cox is a 20 year veteran of the computing and EDA markets. He began his career in the emergent days of the RISC movement, designing microprocessors and multiprocessing systems for Motorola and Solbourne Computer. In 1992, Mr. Cox founded Idealogy, an EDA products/services company providing transaction-based verification solutions to customers such as Apple, Cisco, Conexant, Intel, and Nortel. In 1998, Idealogy merged with Design Acceleration, Inc. of San Jose followed not long after by an acquisition by Cadence Design Systems. While at Cadence, Mr. Cox was a key contributor to the early success of Cadence’s Verification Cockpit – including Testbuilder, the predecessor to SystemC™-SCV. More recently, Mr. Cox was Director of Engineering at Crosswalk, Inc., building highly-parallel grid-based systems that deliver high-performance and scalability to the storage-networking market.

Today, Target is also announcing that the company is expanding into Israel with the establishment of a sales and support channel there. To read the full news release about this expansion, visit www.retarget.com.

About Target Compiler Technologies

Target Compiler Technologies is the leading provider of retargetable software tools to accelerate the design, programming and verification of flexible processor cores, from embedded processors to programmable ASICs. Target’s Chess/Checkers tool suite has been applied by customers worldwide to design application-specific instruction-set processors (ASIPs) for diverse application domains, including GSM and WCDMA handsets, VoIP, audio coding, car infotainment, ADSL and VDSL modems, wireless LAN, hearing instruments, mobile image processing and various control and interfacing applications. Target is a spin-off of IMEC and is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. For more information about Target Compiler Technologies, visit www.retarget.com.

Contact information

Steve Cox Target Compiler Technologies 1004 Grant Place Boulder, CO 80302 U.S.A.		Phone: +1 303 459 4337 Email: steve.cox@retarget.com
Guido Breens Target Compiler Technologies Technologielaan 11-0002 B-3001 Leuven, Belgium		Phone: +32 16 40 81 14 Email: guido.breens@retarget.com

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