Oki Semiconductor Highlights ARM-Based Microcontroller Momentum Through Series of 10 ARM Products in 2003

Oki advantage microcontrollers™ Program and Technical Workshops Bring ARM Solutions to the Broader Embedded World

San Francisco, Calif., April 23, 2003 -- Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, today announced the fulfillment of its strategy to bring ARM solutions to the broader embedded world, following the launch of a series of Oki advantage microcontrollers™ since the beginning of 2003. Featuring ARM's® industry-leading 32-bit RISC architecture, Oki's advantage microcontroller product families - including the ML674K and ML675K series of microcontrollers, and the ML675200 digital audio controller - will be demonstrated at the Embedded Systems Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in the Oki Semiconductor booth,

Oki began its development and marketing of general-purpose and Application Specific Standard Product (ASSP) microcontrollers that were based on the ARM core architecture in 2001. With the adoption of a new ARM strategy and tag line - "Oki advantage microcontrollers™ bring ARM® to the broader embedded world" - Oki has more clearly outlined its strategic partnership with ARM and the benefits to Oki customers of that alliance. Oki's recent product introductions address the unmet needs of the embedded marketplace by offering affordable, high-performance 32-bit ARM7™-core MCU solutions as an alternative to 16-bit proprietary designs. Each series of new products demonstrates Oki's commitment to offering its customers MCUs with all of the advantages of ARM technology, including industry support, out-of-the-box software applications and a wide selection of system development tools, such as the industry's first low-cost ARM tool suite.

"The unveiling of the Oki advantage microcontroller program for our 10 ARM core-based MCU products exemplifies the tremendous momentum Oki has made over the past year in its strategy to bring ARM solutions to the embedded marketplace," said Ike Saeed, vice president of marketing, Oki Semiconductor. "We've made significant steps in rapidly delivering general-purpose ARM microcontrollers and specialized products to meet the low-cost requirements of a whole new set of embedded system designers."

The Oki/ARM Product Families

Since February 10, 2003, Oki's advantage microcontrollers product announcements have included:

• The ML674K series - The ML674K series aimed at designers seeking 32-bit CPU performance at a price that is competitive with 16- and 8-bit designs. The three products in this family are based on the ARM7TDMI™ core, and are targeted at general-purpose applications, including industrial, consumer electronics, biomedical and medical instrumentation, PC peripherals and security appliance systems.
• The ML675K series - A new family of low-cost, 32-bit microcontrollers that is a performance upgrade to the ML674K series. This series is also based on the ARM7TDMI core and targeted at general-purpose applications. The Oki ML675K series features several high-performance features such as an internal unified cache, 32 KB of high speed RAM, and an operating frequency of up to 60 MHz. The ML675K is available with Mask boot ROM, 256 KB or 512 KB Flash ROM.
• The ML675200 - The industry's first ARM-DSP standard dual-core digital audio controller for MP3 players. The Oki ML675200 ASSP is the only ARM MCU with an MP3 audio processing engine on a 16-bit DSP core, specifically targeted at the growing markets for MP3/WMA (Windows Media Audio) and speech processing applications.
  

Additionally, Oki has made announcements with its partners, including:

• Availability of an ARM RealView Developer Kit for Oki designed as a complete, low-cost solution for Oki's family of general-purpose advantage microcontrollers. The ARM RealView solution for the ML674K products is a comprehensive tools package for writing, compiling, debugging and integrating systems based on Oki's MCUs. It includes many of the same features of ARM's full development package, but at a much lower cost.
• With Innovada, Oki is providing a turn-key, inexpensive and flexible soft modem solution targeting demanding industrial applications, point-of-sale terminals, remote access and other data applications. The embedded modem solution completely replaces modem chipsets, and runs entirely on Oki's ML674K and ML675K ARM core-based family of microcontrollers.

Oki/ARM Technical Workshops
Today at the Embedded Systems Conference, Oki is announcing a series of 20 technical hands-on workshops to be held in conjunction with ARM and Unique Memec, Oki's distributor. The workshops are designed to introduce potential MCU customers to the architecture of Oki's ARM-based microcontrollers, to highlight the advantages of ARM technology, and to walk through a simple training project using the ARM RealView Developer Kit for Oki on an actual hardware target. The first series of workshops will be held from May through August, 2003, in several cities across North America, including: San Jose, CA, Southern California (Orange County, Los Angeles), Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Huntsville, AL, Richardson, TX, and Toronto and Montreal, Canada.

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, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller, display drivers, 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 wholly owned subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000 and QS9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available through its web site at: www.okisemi.com/us.