ParthusCeva Delivers World's First "Drop-In" Macro for Bluetooth

BlueStream 3000 - Zero Risk Bluetooth In Design And Deployment

San Jose, CA - 04 December 2002 - ParthusCeva, Inc. (Nasdaq: PCVA, LSE: PCV) the leading licensor of digital signal processors (DSP) cores and related Intellectual Property (IP) to the semiconductor industry, announces a breakthrough Bluetooth IP solution which will be demonstrated at the Bluetooth Developer Conference in San Jose this week (12-14 December, 2002) at Booth # 412.

As Bluetooth becomes a must have-feature for all of today's SOC designs, designers require a low cost, easy-to-integrate, pre-certified solution. BlueStream 3000 is targeted to meet these industry requirements for very high volume, cost-sensitive devices such as headsets, PDAs, mobile phones, cameras and cordless telephones. BlueStream 3000 is delivered as a "drop-in" macro, which is independent of process technology and foundry, and can easily be integrated into silicon as a standard peripheral block. BlueStream 3000 is based on ParthusCeva's industry leading BlueStream platform which has been licensed by several leading semiconductor manufacturers including Hitachi, Fujitsu, ST Microelectronics, 3Com and Agilent.

Remove Overhead Cost
Current Bluetooth solutions integrate a dedicated Bluetooth baseband, a separate host processor and radio in a multi-chip module product. BlueStream 3000 slashes the cost of the solution by over 70% by eliminating the need for dedicated baseband functionality in the module and instead integrating it with the existing system SoC. As the platform incorporates both its own dedicated non-royalty bearing CPU, and with software stacks running in ROM, BlueStream 3000 delivers the lowest cost for Bluetooth deployment.

Remove Integration Complexity
BlueStream 3000 can be integrated into the existing system SoC in less than one weeks design effort. Silicon designers can integrate BlueStream 3000 in their designs at RTL level or silicon level as BlueStream 3000 is delivered with well-defined and silicon-proven applications requiring no additional Bluetooth certification, significantly reducing time to market for silicon manufacturers.

BlueStream 3000 is fully compliant with all mandatory and optional features required in Bluetooth specification revision 1.1, while supporting multiple industry standard CODEC and RF solutions. BlueStream 3000 is a highly integrated solution integrating the complete baseband, RISC processor, RAM, ROM and the complete host controller software stack required to support Bluetooth 1.1, including multipoint, scatternet, sniff, park, hold and master-slave switch. BlueStream 3000 has been architected to offload the real time aspects of the protocol stack of the host processor - alleviating the need for a dedicated Bluetooth processor. In current designs this is a significant cost barrier to the integration of Bluetooth in PDAs, cell phones and other high volume embedded applications.

"Bluetooth is one of the fastest growing markets in the wireless industry. ParthusCeva has consistently delivered industry leading IP for Bluetooth applications and has been the leading supplier of technology for this high growth market segment" said Gerry Maguire, VP and GM of Wireless Solutions Division, ParthusCeva, Inc. "With Bluetooth achieving mass deployment in multiple markets, our customers have sought a Bluetooth architecture to dramatically reduce the cost and ease of deployment of Bluetooth in their next generation SoC designs."

Key architectural features of the BlueStream 3000 include:

•   Industry's smallest die area including core, CPU and memories 
•   Support all existing Bluetooth profiles 
•   Supports several industry standard radios and CODECs 
•   Delivered as a configurable macro with well defined interfaces 
•   Standard HCI interface supports multiple higher layer protocol stacks 
•   The solution is upgradable to Bluetooth 1.2 when these specifications are available.
•   Includes advanced low power features to deliver lowest power consumption

Zero Risk Bluetooth
The BlueStream 3000 solution is focused on delivering low cost, small footprint, and pre-certified configurable macro for Bluetooth applications. To deliver to these goals, BlueStream 3000 delivers the following benefits:

•   Bluetooth certified IP - No additional time-consuming certification needed for IC 
•   Royalty free, Bluetooth optimised integrated RISC processor 
•   No additional silicon area required for baseband functionality 
•   Frees the host processor of running real time protocol stack

About Bluetooth
Bluetooth is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for wireless communication between a range of personal electronic devices such as mobile phones, handheld devices, PC peripherals, and automotive, home and industrial appliances. By eliminating the need for cables between inter-connecting devices, individuals can share voice and data using broadband and secure local wireless connections. By 2005, Cahners In-Stat forecasts that Bluetooth technology will be used in almost 780 million devices, ranging from mobile phones and desktop computers to digital cameras and automobiles. The Bluetooth trademarks are owned by Bluetooth SIG Inc., USA.

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About ParthusCeva
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A PDF copy of this press release is also available here

Safe Harbour Statement
This document contains "forward-looking statements", which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including, without limitation, statements to the effect that the company or its management "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "plans" and similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include uncertainties relating to the ability of management to successfully integrate the operations of Parthus and Ceva, uncertainties relating to the acceptance of our DSP cores and semiconductor intellectual property offerings, continuing or worsening weakness in our markets and those of our customers, quarterly variations in our results, and other uncertainties that are discussed in the registration statement on Form S-1and the most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q of ParthusCeva (formerly called Ceva, Inc.), on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.