Paris – France and Santa Clara - USA, June 28, 2006: ESI Group, the leading solution provider in physics based simulation software and Intel, the world largest chips makers announced a Technological Collaboration. ESI Group and Intel will jointly develop ESI Group enterprise leading solutions on Intel Xeon® Processors and Intel® Itanium® Processors benefiting from the latest technological improvements such as the Multi Core Technology using Intel Software Tools (compilers library…). This collaboration will accelerate the adoption of Intel technologies within ESI leading product line.

“In our research to better answer our customers expectations and in our goal to bring additional value, this partnership with Intel will create synergies by taking advantage of Intel’s leading technologies combined with state of the art of ESI Group’s software architecture. This agreement opens the door to real time physics-based simulation.” says Vincent Chaillou, President and Chief Operating Officer, Product Operations, ESI Group;

“We are pleased that ESI Group used our tools like Intel® Fortran Compilers to optimize PAM-CRASH et PAM-STAMP 2005 and to take advantage of the latest capabilities like dual-core and 64 bits from Intel® Xeon® 5100 series or Itanium® processors” explain Christian Morales Intel’s vice president, sales and marketing group general manager, Europe, Middle East, Africa

As a result of this collaboration, both companies will put together worldwide technical and marketing efforts in order to identify and share the optimization of computational resources. In addition, the two companies will strengthen their marketing activities through common seminars, road show, events, communication to better answer to the customer’s requirements. This partnership will enable ESI’s customers to use more performing solutions with Intel state-of-the-art technologies.

About ESI Group

ESI Group is a world-leading supplier, and a pioneer of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and evaluate the environment’s impact on product performance. ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative and open virtual engineering solution known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous and collaborative manner. This integrated protocol allows all the company’s solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors. By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantage by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company generated sales of €62.2m in 2005, employs over 500 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

Virtual Try-Out Space® and VTOS® are registered trademarks of ESI Group. All other products, names or companies are the brands or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

About Intel Corporation

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products, and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Funded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, Intel introduced the world's first microprocessor in, 1971. Today Intel the world's largest chip maker is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking, and communications products.
Learn more at http://www.intel.com/intel/index.htm

ESI Group - Press Relations                                            

Nathalie David-Franc                                               

nathalie.david-franc@esi-group.com                                  

Phone : + 33 (0)1 41 73 58 35