SHORT TAKES

UNITED DEVICES SECURES $13 MILLION IN FUNDING

Austin, TEXAS — United Devices, Inc., an Internet distributed computing technology provider, announced that it has secured $13 million in funding from SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Oak Investment Partners, and other strategic investors. United Devices will use the funding to launch the first applications built on the company’s Internet distributed computing infrastructure. “United Devices, with its world-class team of engineers led by Dr. David Anderson, is the clear leader in pioneering the Internet distributed computing model,” said Bill Burnham, principal managing director for SOFTBANK Venture Capital and United Devices board member. “A large number of existing infrastructure services can be delivered much more efficiently by aggregating and coordinating the vast computation, storage and bandwidth resources now connected to the Internet.

“United Devices is building an infrastructure that promises to deliver many essential Internet services at a fraction of their current cost. They will deliver new applications that never existed before, because in the past organizations were never able to harness millions of interconnected machines at once,” said Basil Horangic, Principal at Oak Investment Partners. “The speed, efficiency, and massive scalability with which United Devices can deliver results to the Bioinformatics, Web Testing and Monitoring, and Content Search and Management markets represent a fundamental change for these businesses.” United Devices plans to aggregate unused resources from the Internet via a number of innovative channels. Computers that participate in the United Devices network download a highly secure software agent that permits idle resources to be put to work without any user disruption. These aggregated resources will power applications in a wide range of markets, including non- profit projects that stand to revolutionize our ability to cure disease and preserve our environment. “Our mission is to provide the infrastructure necessary to turn the Internet into a distributed computing resource. This resource will be used by businesses and research organizations to realize their objectives more quickly at a fraction of the cost,” said Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices. “The funding from SOFTBANK Venture Capital and Oak Investment Partners, two world class venture firms, enables us to accelerate our development efforts, cement our leadership position, and realize our vision of a future in which the fabric of the Internet becomes an irreplaceable computing resource to the world.”

CATALYST SEMICOND. ANNOUNCES FINANCIAL RESULTS

New York, N.Y. — Catalyst Semiconductor, Inc. announced its financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2000. Revenues for the first quarter were $25.4 million, up 176% from revenues of $9.2 million in the first quarter a year ago. Net income for the first quarter was $8.2 million or $0.40 per diluted share, as compared to a net income of $0.9 million, or $0.05 per diluted share in the first quarter a year ago. Compared to the previous quarter, revenue was up 49% and income was up 67%. During the quarter, cash increased by $9.5 million. Debt remained at $2.0 million, the minimum amount allowed by the Company’s bank agreement.

“First quarter results reflect progress in ramping up additional foundry capacity at Oki and Xfab”, said Radu Vanco, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We continue to regard expanding foundry capacity as our primary objective, since demand has been stronger than our production capacity. In addition, as we complete the process of transferring our products to the more advanced technology currently operational at both Oki and Xfab, we’ll be able to generate incremental revenue from each wafer. The growth of Internet related infrastructures and applications, of telecommunications in general and the emergence of a larger variety of consumer products, including hand-held devices, provides numerous opportunities for Company’s products”, continued Vanco. “We are also present in industrial, automotive and home electronics market segments. This represents an opportunity for the Company to diversify its application base and become less dependent on the performance of any single market segment, such as personal computers or cellular telephones. Since we still have a relatively small market share in our core business, investing in expanding our sales organization is a high priority. During the first quarter we have opened two new sales offices – one in Seoul, South Korea and another in Singapore, both areas in which we see substantial opportunities”, concluded Vanco.

SIMTEK ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF MACROTECH

Colorado Springs, COLO. — Simtek Corporation, provider of high performance nonvolatile memory and logic integrated circuits, has acquired San Jose based MacroTech Semiconductor, Inc. (MTS). The acquisition, effective July 31, along with the May purchase of Integrated Logic Systems (ILSI) expands Simtek’s potential to further penetrate the $3 billion programmable logic device (PLD/FPGA/CPLD) market. ILSI, a provider of low-cost custom replacements for PLDs supplied by companies such as Xilinx, Altera, Actel and QuickLogic, supports a family of products capable of up to 40,000 logic gates and 40,000 bits of memory. MacroTech also provides replacements for PLDs and allows Simtek to address a much wider range of PLD product families, currently offering technology that can efficiently provide replacements for programmable parts of up to one million gates and correspondingly large memories. MTS products are currently manufactured at Chartered Semiconductor on their 0.35 micron process and will easily scale to 0.25 and 0.18 micron technologies, significantly enhancing Simtek’s PLD replacement service capabilities.

“MacroTech has developed unique chip capabilities, using a scalable architecture that supports cost-optimized products for a wide range of chip sizes and functional options. These features, together with very fast development times, give us competitive advantages that dovetail perfectly with Simtek’s Integrated Logic capabilities,” stated Jaskarn Johal, MacroTech’s president. “Simtek is putting together all of the elements required to be a major participant in the logic market and we’re excited to be a part of it.” “Simtek is currently in a very strong growth pattern,” says Douglas Mitchell, Simtek’s president and CEO. “The acquisitions of both MacroTech and ILSI provide a timely opportunity to leverage our sales, marketing and operations infrastructure. Even prior to closing the acquisition, Simtek began supporting MacroTech’s sales activities, using our infrastructure to build customer confidence. Within a couple of months we received a new customer order initially worth $900,000, with potentially several times this value over the next year and a half. We are now bidding for other contracts of similar size. These are the kinds of high value opportunities our combined capabilities are opening up for Simtek, and will help to fuel our growth going forward.”

NOVELL MEETS MUTED EXPECTATIONS

Provo, UTAH — Novell, the third-worst performer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, said fiscal third-quarter net income fell 83 percent as the software maker continued to lose business to competitors. Net income for the quarter ended July 31 was $8.6 million, or 3 cents a share, down from $49.3 million, or 14 cents a share a year earlier, exceeding estimates of 2 cents a share, the average from six analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. Revenue dropped 17 percent to $270 million, from $327 million a year ago.

The Provo, Utah-based software maker is trying to recover from three quarters of lackluster sales in the face of increased competition from Microsoft, which earlier this year unveiled Windows 2000, its new computer operating system for businesses. “Although we met our total revenue and earnings objectives for the third quarter, we are nonetheless disappointed by continued weakness of packaged software sales globally,” chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement. Novell also said it would repurchase $500 million of its shares.

ARTISAN RAISES $ 7.44 MILLION IN VENTURE FINANCING

Portland, ORE. — ARTiSAN Software Tools, a leading provider of real-time modeling tools, has announced it has received $7.44 million in a mezzanine round of venture financing, the largest single investment for the company to date. The investment was led by Pi Capital with strong support from existing investor Quester. Other investors include 3i Group and Pond Venture Partners. All of the investors are based in London, England. This latest round of financing will be used to augment ARTiSAN’s sales and marketing activities worldwide and further accelerate the company’s continuing rapid growth. The new operating capital may also be used for acquisitions, according to Caine O’Brien, CEO of ARTiSAN Software Tools Inc.

Sales in 1999 doubled over the year before, reflecting the enthusiasm with which developers are embracing ARTiSAN’s Real-time Studio product for visualizing, designing and validating real-time and embedded systems. O’Brien said that ARTiSAN is on track to more than double its sales in 2000 over 1999, as well. “We are very pleased to secure this round of financing,” said O’Brien. “With this strong vote of confidence from our investors, we are poised to firmly establish our leadership in the real-time systems design market. We have the products, the management team and the funds to be the dominant player in the marketplace.” ARTiSAN provides innovative, UML-based (Unified Modeling Language) systems and software modeling solutions for designers of real-time and embedded systems. “ARTiSAN’s installed-base satisfaction is leagues ahead of the competition in this increasingly important marketplace,” said David Alexander, investment manager at Pi Capital. “We interviewed numerous ARTiSAN customers in Europe and North America and were very impressed with how delighted they were with ARTiSAN’s products and customer support.”

VA LINUX POSTS LOSS

New York, N.Y. — VA Linux Systems Inc., which provides computer products and services based on the Linux operating system, posted a fiscal fourth-quarter operating loss that was a nickel narrower than analysts had expected, as sales soared more than 500 percent from the same quarter last year. For the quarter ended July 28, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said its net loss was $4.08 million, or 10 cents per share. Analysts polled by earnings tracker First Call had expected VA Linux to lose 15 cents per share during the quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $50.7 million. That’s up 547 percent from $7.8 million during last year’s fiscal fourth quarter and up 46 percent sequentially. For all of fiscal 2000, VA Linux reported a net loss of $23.1 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a loss of $12.2 million, or 85 cents per share, in fiscal 1999.

The company’s revenue in fiscal 2000 rose 579 percent to $120.3 million from $17.7 million in fiscal 1999. “We have continued to demonstrate, quarter after quarter, strong revenue growth and improved financial results,” Larry M. Augustin, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “We improved our gross margins to 22 percent and reduced our net loss, excluding non-cash charges, to 8.1 percent of revenue,” Augustin added. “Our differentiation as a full-solution provider of Linux and open-source products became more visible this month with the launch of our build-to-order software selector and our launch of the open-source development network.” VA Linux is one of a rapidly growing group of companies that specializes in software and solutions based on the Linux operating system.

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