February 25, 1999, Moscow, Russia -- Today Elbrus International, a Russian microprocessor design company, disclosed the details of its revolutionary new microprocessor to the Russian press. The new technology promises to redefine the processor performance frontier. The microprocessor, termed E2k, will function 3 to 5 times more quickly than Merced, the next-generation Intel chip, while still running all legacy software. The E2K project represents the latest commercial endeavor of the former Soviet Union's most talented computer scientists, many of whom have designed and delivered three generations of supercomputers, including those running the Russian Space Mission Control and the Russian Missile Defense System.

The technology underlying the E2k delivers computing performance that exceeds all other existing and planned processors. This extraordinary performance results from an incredibly efficient architecture design that has been continually refined by the Elbrus team since 1985. To match the recent advances in chip technology, which allows increasing levels of parallelism available in hardware, the Elbrus team has departed from the complex superscalar RISC architecture (utilized in Pentiums), in favor of an explicitly parallel instruction set.

The Elbrus team has also devised a mechanism to enable x86 programs (written for Intel computers, e.g. Windows) to run on the E2k chip without infringing on existing intellectual property. This approach, called binary compilation, will be used to build in compatibility with other platforms, mainly with IA-64 (Intel's platform for Merced). Elbrus technology does not infringe on any Western intellectual property and it is protected by 70 US patent applications.

The core of the Elbrus team has worked together for over thirty years, developing three generations of supercomputers used by the Soviet military and space programs.

A long history of innovation speaks highly of the Elbrus team, which was the first to implement a superscalar RISC architecture in 1978 15 years before the first Western firm did the same. In 1985, the team abandoned superscalar and designed their first explicitly parallel computer – Elbrus III (with a speed performance twice as fast as the Cray YMP).

Presently, Elbrus is looking for a strategic partnership with an established technology company. By combining the Elbrus technology and technical expertise with a partner's marketing power, brand, and process expertise, we have an opportunity to gain access to one of the most lucrative markets in the world. The $40 million investment required to try and capture this opportunity is marginal relative to any other development cost in this industry.

Mr. Babaian, President of Elbrus, said: Elbrus venture is perfectly positioned to take the processor market by storm. This is a test of whether a Western firm is willing to partner with a Russian team to achieve commercial success.