Teams with Prestigious Portuguese University to Drive Engineering Design Innovation

PORTO, Portugal, April 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIPS), a leading provider of industry-standard architectures, processors and analog IP for digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications and business applications, today announced it is teaming with the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), a leading school of engineering in Portugal, to further innovation and technical advancement in microelectronics. The multi-year agreement provides a foundation for enhanced educational research by the masters and doctoral programs of the school's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. The agreement will also help prepare engineering students for careers in semiconductor design, where a large number of companies are already leveraging MIPS' IP in a wide array of embedded designs.

Through the program, a distinct group of graduate students will have access to MIPS Technologies' IP to conduct research in the areas of architectural design implementation, back-end synthesis and flows, peripheral interfaces, pipelines, co-processor development, user-defined instruction blocks, and other key areas that impact performance, power dissipation, cost, and critical time-to-market efficiencies in today's semiconductor devices. MIPS Technologies and FEUP will work jointly to create a student package using the MIPS IP. This package will serve as a valuable tool that can be used to enhance the study of architecture, micro-architecture and processor design in university classrooms around the globe.

"We are thrilled to be partnering with a world-class university to expand academic research in micro-architecture and processor design," said Jose Franca, president and general manager of MIPS Technologies' Analog Business Group. "With an impressive number of former FEUP students now employed locally in MIPS' Analog Business Group, we are proud to have such rare talent that is now part of the future of advanced embedded design. Through some bright engineering students, we are increasing awareness of MIPS as an industry-leading architecture -- which is used in many of today's digital consumer, home networking and portable media applications."

"We are honored that MIPS chose FEUP for its first ever European university program," said Professor Jose Silva Matos, chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at FEUP. "We see the partnership with MIPS as helping to enhance education and cutting-edge research, while providing a deep knowledge exchange between MIPS engineers, our students and professors. We are closing the gap between the industry and academia by strengthening ties with one of the world's leading semiconductor IP companies."

According to Radhika Thekkath, MIPS Technologies' Director of Business Development and Strategic Planning, "We selected FEUP as the site for our first European university program because of its renowned curriculum for computer and electrical engineering throughout Portugal. We look forward to continuing to build our relationship with the university and further collaborate on next-generation embedded technologies."

About FEUP

The Faculty of Engineering (FEUP) is one of the 14 Faculties of the University of Porto, the largest Portuguese University with nearly 28,000 students. FEUP has a full-time teaching and research staff of about 370, and a student body of 6,600 (2,000 at the MSC and PhD level). For more information, visit http://www.fe.up.pt. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) of FEUP covers the main areas of modern Electrical Engineering, with emphasis on Power Systems, Automation, Control, Electronics, Digital Systems, and Communications. A staff of 80 PhDs is strongly involved in two main teaching programs: a 5-year Integrated Masters and a Doctoral Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Research is carried out within the framework of three associated Research Institutes: INESC Porto (Power Systems, Information Systems, Microelectronics, Optoelectronics, Communications and Multimedia), ISR (Systems and Robotics) and INEB (Biomedical Engineering).

About MIPS Technologies, Inc.

MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIPS) is the world's second largest semiconductor design IP company and the number one analog IP company worldwide. With more than 250 customers around the globe, MIPS Technologies powers some of the world's most popular products for the digital consumer, broadband, wireless, networking and portable media markets -- including broadband devices from Linksys, DTVs and entertainment systems from Sony, DVD recordable devices from Pioneer, digital set-top boxes from Motorola, network routers from Cisco, 32-bit microcontrollers from Microchip Technology and laser printers from Hewlett-Packard. Today, the company owns more than 400 patent properties (patents and applications) worldwide. Founded in 1998, MIPS Technologies is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide. For more information, contact (650) 567-5000 or visit http://www.mips.com.

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