Red Hat Unveils New Open Source Simulation Tool —SID— for Constructing Embedded Systems and Appliances

Business Wire, Dec 21, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 21, 2000

Project Enables Design of Open Source Software Prior to Creation of

Physical Hardware

Red Hat (Nasdaq:RHAT), a leader in developing, deploying and managing open source Internet infrastructure, today introduced the SID project, an open source hardware simulation framework for embedded developers. This package consists of software components interacting with each other to imitate the behavior of physical hardware before its actual creation.

"Developing a simulation environment today is almost as complex as the system itself, and the framework SID provides is unprecedented in the rest of the open source community," said Kim Knuttila, vice president, Engineering Services for Red Hat, Inc. "There are other free and open source simulators available out there on the Net, but none that actually provide an environment to plug and play together."

With SID, Red Hat builds for its partners a simulation framework featuring a modular architecture of software components interacting together to imitate physical hardware. This modularity allows users or programs to closely monitor and alter a running simulation, giving embedded software developers debugging and testing advantages over a typical hardware model. SID includes a library of components for modeling hardware and software parts, instrumentation, control and external interfaces. SID runs on Linux, Solaris and Cygwin, while supporting the ARM and M32 CPU processor families and several non-CPU specific part models.

"The introduction of SID reinforces Red Hat's commitment to bringing new technologies to open source developers," said Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat. "SID provides a framework for understanding and evaluating the performance of both abstract and real world systems."

For additional information or to become a partner in the SID project, please visit http://sources.redhat.com/sid

Open Source Momentum

International Data Corp. (IDC) research states that paid Linux shipments grew faster than any other server operating system over the past two years, and their preliminary figures for 1999 show Linux shipments hold 24.6 percent of the server operating system market, up from 15.8 in 1998. IDC also states that Red Hat holds 50.2 percent of Linux vendor market share and that Red Hat Linux is by far the most popular distribution, preferred by 68.7 percent of U.S. Linux users.

Research firm Netcraft, Inc. (www.netcraft.com), states that as of May 2000, 30 percent of all public Web sites run on Linux-based operating systems, making Linux the most popular choice for deploying public Web sites. IDC research shows 40 percent of all spending on Linux servers is for Internet related applications, firmly entrenching Linux servers in the Internet infrastructure.

Finally, IDC predicts that by 2002, there will be more than 55 million handheld and notebook-style information appliance devices and that by 2005, shipments of these appliances will exceed shipments of PCs.

Red Hat's numerous alliances with industry leaders and the demand for Linux-based applications has created open source support from many of the industry's leading software and hardware manufacturers, including Dell, Compaq, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Netscape, Novell, Oracle and SAP.

Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat (Nasdaq:RHAT) offers users one single, trusted point of contact and a common platform for developing, deploying and managing open source across Internet infrastructure and devices that connect to the Internet, ranging from small embedded devices to high availability clusters and integrated Web server/ecommerce OSes. And the Red Hat Network, Red Hat's unique management technology, helps companies worldwide easily manage it all by delivering open source products, service, support and information on-line in real-time.

In addition to the award-winning Red Hat Linux server operating system, Red Hat offers Stronghold Secure Web Server and Credit Card Verification Software for secure e-commerce and is the principal provider of GNU-based developer tools and support solutions for a wide variety of embedded processors. Red Hat also provides run-time solutions such as Linux, eCos, uClinux, the award-winning RedBoot, custom engineering services, support and training to organizations in all embedded and Linux markets.

Red Hat is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, N.C. and has offices worldwide. Please visit Red Hat on the Web at www.redhat.com. For investor inquiries, contact Lippert/Heilshorn at (212) 838-3777.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, management's plans and objectives for future operations, and management's assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, product plans and performance, the ability of Red Hat to attract users to redhat.com, the lack of demonstrated widespread acceptance of e-learning as an effective training tool, reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, the viability of the Internet, and other risks detailed in Red Hat's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC's Web site at http://www.sec.gov.