Oki Semiconductor Unveils Latest Addition to ARM-Powered Product Line with Series of Low-Cost, 32-Bit, General Purpose Microcontrollers

Oki Teams with ARM to Establish ARM7 Family as the New 8051-Type Standard for 16/32 Bit MCU Market

Sunnyvale, CA, February 10, 2003 -- Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, today introduced three product additions to its family of low-cost, 32-bit, general purpose microcontrollers featuring ARM® architecture. Oki's ML674001, ML67Q4002 and ML67Q4003 are the latest in a series of ARM7™ core-based offerings that bring the advantages of the industry's leading 32-bit RISC microprocessor architecture and 32-bit MCU performance at a price geared to designers currently using proprietary 16-bit technology.
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Oki Semiconductor's goal is to make the ARM7 family of microcontrollers the new standard for low-cost 16/32-bit MCU design, much like the 8051 set the standard for 8-bit architecture. Oki's new ML674K series of MCU solutions provides a better alternative to MCUs with proprietary architecture, because the ARM7 core used in these products offers higher performance, better industry support, more ready-to-use software applications, and a wide selection of tools from third-party vendors. The new ML674K MCU series also enables more integrated features and the flexibility for easy upgrades to new advanced ARM devices from Oki in the future.

The ML674001, ML67Q4002 and ML67Q4003 feature the industry-standard ARM7TDMI® architecture, µPlat-7B design platform, 32 KB of internal SRAM memory, and a host of useful I/O peripherals, including 4 KB of internal boot ROM. Additionally, the ML67Q4002 includes 256 KB of flash memory, while the ML67Q4003 comes standard with 512 KB of flash. The products are also pin-for-pin compatible with each other for upgrade flexibility. A CPU evaluation board is available, along with reference designs and schematics to facilitate the use of these advanced Oki MCUs.

Oki's ML674001, ML67Q4002 and ML67Q4003 are well suited for a variety of application areas, including industrial, consumer electronics, biomedical and medical instrumentation, PC peripherals and security appliance systems.

Key features include:

• 2 channel DMA controller
• Industrial operating temperature of -40 to +85 degrees C
• General purpose and watchdog timers
• Analog to digital converters
• Up to 33 MHz operating frequency
• Multiple serial ports, including UART, SIO and I2C
• Interface for external ROM (flash), SRAM, SDRAM, memory and IO (4 banks)

The new Oki ML674K series of ARM core-based products were designed based on Oki's µPlat - an award-winning development and evaluation platform that speeds time to market and eases the migration to System on Chip (SOC) product designs. Oki has realized reductions of 50 percent in development times and engineering resources using µPlat, enabling the company to pursue an aggressive rollout of ARM core-based products that will continue in the future.

Oki is targeting its ML674001, ML67Q4002 and ML67Q4003 microcontrollers at the $300 million 16-bit MCU market in North America. Design engineers in this market are increasingly concerned about the ability of proprietary product lines to keep pace with ARM core-based technology.

"Today's announcement is another step in our commitment to expand Oki's 32-bit line of standard ARM MCUs," said Ike Saeed, vice president of marketing, Oki Semiconductor. "These new MCU solutions from Oki will provide designers with 32-bit performance at a 16-bit price, and a risk-free alternative to proprietary MCUs from other suppliers. The system designers can now make an easy transition to 32-bit ARM cores by taking advantage of a myriad of ARM development tools and software platforms."

"The continuing need for increased functionality in the microcontroller market, which produces volumes of hundreds of millions of units per year, is creating a paradigm shift from 8/16-bit to 32-bit microcontrollers," said Mike Inglis, EVP, Marketing, ARM. "By incorporating ARM's inherent advantages of low power, small area, and high performance into a 32-bit microcontroller, Oki's new family of ARM7 core-based products are well positioned in both cost and performance to capitalize on the shift in a market."

Price and Availability

Oki Semiconductor's ML674001, ML67Q4002 and ML67Q4003 are presently sampling. Production prices are expected to start at $5 for the ROM-less version in quantities of 10,000 units.

About Oki Semiconductor

Building on Oki's century-long commitment to communications technologies and markets, Oki Semiconductor designs and markets a broad line of advanced integrated circuits for telecommunications, network, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, laser, networking, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller and memory devices, offered in a variety of creative packages. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oki Semiconductor is a division of Oki America Inc., which is a subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available at www.okisemi.com/us.

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