StarGen and Hybricon Corporation Announce Collaboration

Engineering and Delivering PICMG 2.17 Products Today

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.-September 30, 2002 - StarGen, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, and Hybricon Corporation, a worldwide leader in the design and manufacturer of high performance packaging solutions, today announced that they are collaborating to develop end user solutions for PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®) 2.17 applications.

"As an active member of the StarFabric Working Group, and a sponsor of the PICMG 2.17 CompactPCI® StarFabric Specification, we can provide not only the hardware but also the technical engineering support they need to properly systems engineer solutions," says Bob Sullivan, vice president and corporate director of technology at Hybricon Corporation.

StarFabric, an open interconnect standard originally developed by StarGen, is a powerful switched interconnect technology for backplane and chassis-to-chassis applications. It enables next-generation embedded distributed processing applications to meet market demands. The technology provides for unprecedented levels of scalability, performance and availability in a wide range of systems. It supports multiple classes of traffic adding further flexibility and enhancements to systems while leveraging existing standards-based software and hardware investments.

Hybricon has designed, manufactured and is delivering several specific PICMG 2.17 StarFabric solutions in response to specific customer applications. A Design and Developer's Kit, tailored for development lab use, consisting of a portable enclosure with an 8-slot PICMG 2.17 StarFabric CompactPCI backplane and an embedded power supply, with PICMG 2.9 System Management, two PICMG 2.17 fabric slots, and a mix of PICMG 2.17 node slots with and without PCI and H.110. The Design and Developer's kit is the easy way for many development engineers to test prototype switch fabric designs and to write software for those designs.

Hybricon is proud to be a part of the StarFabric Trade Association (www.starfabric.org), a non-profit, open membership industry group, was created to develop and promote the StarFabric switched interconnect technology. The founding members represent a wide spectrum of organizations, which together provide the broad and diverse perspective required to ensure StarFabric will continue to meet the dynamic market requirements of next generation embedded distributed processing systems.

"Together with Hybricon's proven leadership in creating high-performance packaging solutions, this collaboration brings to market an easily-deployable, highly-scalable solution - essential for end-user PICMG 2.17 applications," said Tracy Richardson, president of StarGen, Inc. "StarGen will work closely with Hybricon to continue to bring StarFabric-architected PICMG 2.17 products to market."

Visit http://www.hybricon.com/coolslot/picmg217.html for more details on the Design and Developer's kit. To learn more about PICMG 2.17 StarFabric products from Hybricon, visit www.hybricon.com.

About Hybricon Hybricon Corporation (www.hybricon.com) is an Executive voting member of PICMG and VITA. As a world-wide leader and rapidly growing designer and manufacturer of backplanes, card frames, and powered enclosures for the electronics packaging marketplace, HYBRICON serves a worldwide market through its corporate headquarters in Ayer, Massachusetts. Additional company and product information can be found on the World Wide Web at www.hybricon.com. Hybricon is an ISO9001 registered company.

About the StarFabric Trade Association The StarFabric Trade Association is a Massachusetts-based non-profit corporation. It is an open membership organization, with representatives from all aspects of the embedded and communication markets including semiconductor, software, board, platform, and end-system vendors. It owns and is solely responsible for maintaining and enhancing the StarFabric Architecture. The organization actively promotes StarFabric as an ideal switched interconnect technology for a wide range of embedded distributed processing applications. For more information, please visit www.starfabric.org.

About StarGen StarGen (www.stargen.com) is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed a new switched interconnect technology, StarFabric, for the communication and embedded industries. The technology benefits vendors of carrier and enterprise communication platforms for next generation voice, data, and video networks. Early adopters include those building open standards based access/edge equipment such as media over packet gateways, convergence switches, broadband access concentrators, wireless base stations, cable headend systems, edge routers, and remote access concentrators. Many embedded applications benefit from StarGen's distributed multi-processing features. StarGen's technology provides a dramatic increase in equipment performance, reliability, and Quality of Service while providing for the retention of existing standards-based hardware and software investment. StarGen is headquartered in Marlborough Massachusetts.