Esterel Technologies Donates Electronic System Design Software Valued at Over $20 Million to Universities Worldwide

Twenty universities have joined the Esterel Technologies Academic Program; donations strengthen relationships between Esterel Technologies and the academic community

Guyancourt, France, March 4, 2002

Esterel Technologies today announced that twenty universities have now joined the company's academic program, bringing the value of Esterel Technologies' total donations to these universities to more than $20 million.

We are deeply committed to the academic community, said Eric Bantégnie, president and CEO of Esterel Technologies. We believe that the best designers of tomorrow, and the best designs, will come from those students who have used best-in-class, industrial-strength tools in their classrooms. We will continue to support those universities who have already joined our program, and we invite others to participate. Our goal it to have more than 6000 designers trained on Esterel Studio every year.

Under the Esterel Technologies Academic Program, participating universities are able to license up to 20 seats of Esterel Studio at no charge, provided that the software is used for educational purposes only. Esterel Studio is used to validate the integration of systems-on-chips, and to develop wireless telecommunications protocols and safety-critical embedded software.

Charter members of the program include such prestigious institutions as Columbia University (New York), University of Sheffield (U.K.), Indian Institute of Technology (India), the University of Karlsruhe (Germany), Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), ESSI (France), INRIA (France), Verimag (France), Ecole d'Ingénieurs de Genève (Switzerland), and Aalborg University (Denmark).

The program enables electronic engineering students to learn how to design and verify electronic devices and embedded software using the same products that major worldwide companies such as Texas Instruments, ST Microelectronics, Airbus, Dassault Aviation, and Thales use in their production design flows.

Students enrolled in our embedded systems design courses need to use the tools they will be using to design tomorrow's electronic products, said Klaus Schneider, assistant professor at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. We are extremely grateful to Esterel Technologies for donating Esterel Studio. It gives our students access to powerful features such as intelligent testbench generation and formal verification, all in a single design tool.

The program provides a great opportunity for the academic community, said Gerald Luettgen, senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Having access to Esterel Studio provides our students the opportunity to prepare for designing tomorrow's advanced consumer electronics, telecommunications, automotive and aerospace applications.

With Esterel Studio, my students have the ability to experiment with an industrial-grade environment, preparing them for what I believe is the next wave in system-level design technology, said Stephen Edwards, professor at Columbia University.

Universities that wish to participate in the Esterel Technologies Academic Program may contact coordinator Amandine Roy at +33 (0)1 30 12 28 03, or by email: amandine.roy@esterel-technologies.com.

About Esterel Technologies

Esterel Technologies provides electronic system and embedded software designers with methodologies and tools that improve their productivity and remove the barriers between system specification, implementation, and validation. The company's products automate costly and time-consuming coding and validation work through executable specification, intelligent test suite generation, and automatic code generation. Esterel Technologies is an international company with offices in France, Germany, UK, and the United States.

For more information: www.esterel-technologies.com

Contact

Esterel Technologies

Linda Prowse Fosler

Phone : 650-641-1706

linda.prowse-fosler@esterel-technologies.com

Cayenne Communication

Michelle Clancy

Phone : 252-940-0981

michelle.clancy@cayennecom.com

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