Chipcon reveals launch plans for the industry's first All-In-One IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee System-On-Chip solution

Chipcon reveals launch plans for the CC2430, the industry's first All-In-One IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee System-On-Chip solution

Oslo, Norway, November 29 - 2004 -- Chipcon AS, the leading provider of high-performance, low-power, low-data-rate RF ICs reveals launch plans for the industry's first true single-chip IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee solution. One year after the successful launch of the popular CC2420 (the industry's first IEEE 802.15.4-compliant and ZigBee-ready RF Transceiver), Chipcon once again demonstrates its leading position within ZigBee by introducing the CC2430, the market's first System-on-Chip (SoC) solution combining the excellent features of the CC2420 with an industry-leading 8051 MCU, 128kByte of FLASH memory, 8kByte of RAM plus lots of other powerful features.

The CC2430 is targeted for use in a wide range of applications, including building automation, industrial monitoring and control systems, and wireless sensor networks. This new device will enable OEMs to seamlessly develop complex wireless network products using the CC2430 as the only active device in the system, thus reducing both time to market and production cost to the minimum. "We have seen a tremendous interest for the CC2420 in the market says John Helge Fjellheim, VP of Worldwide Sales. "The uniqueness of being able to offer an All-In-One solution based on the industry-leading CC2420 creates a significant edge compared to the competition" According to Fjellheim, the CC2430 can also be used as a general 2.4 GHz direct sequence spread spectrum device for a number of proprietary solutions not using IEEE 802.15.4 or ZigBee.

ZigBee is a wireless network technology providing low node cost and long battery lifetime. The ZigBee Alliance counts more than one hundred members and the ZigBee standard has the potential to become widely successful within a huge number of wireless applications. " We are seeing a tremendous increase in the interest among OEMs to exploit this new communication standard," says Graham Martin, Business Development Director ZigBee. "It's now clear that also in Europe and Asia the interest among OEMs of the ZigBee standard is heavily picking up." 

All the excellent radio performance of the CC2420, such as very low power consumption, high sensitivity and high immunity against noise and interferers is maintained in the CC2430. The MCU used is a powerful 8051 8-bit single-cycle microcontroller core (which has typically 8 times the performance of a standard 8051). The device is equipped with as much as 128kByte of FLASH memory and 8kByte of RAM that shall be sufficient for virtually all kinds of ZigBee or ZigBee-like wireless network nodes, including both Coordinators, Routers and End Devices. In addition to this, the device includes a great number of other powerful features that are typically required in a complex wireless network technology like ADC, several timers, AES-128 co-processor, USARTs, watchdog timer, Sleep-mode timer with 32 kHz crystal oscillator, Power-On-Reset, Brown-out-detection and 21 programmable I/O pins. "Virtually a dream for an IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee developer," says Svein Anders Tunheim, CTO of Chipcon. He continues, "During receive and transmit, the current consumption of this All-In-One device is as low as 27mA, which is far ahead of competing chipset solutions. Furthermore, due to the CC2430's sleep modes, it is an ideal solution for applications that require very long battery lifetimes."

The CC2430 is based on Chipcon's SmartRF(r)03 technology in 0.18 µm CMOS. It will be available in a 7x7 mm QLP 48 package. Development kits and samples are targeted to be available in Q2 2005. In million quantities, the pricing for the device will be USD 4.00 - or lower. "The ZigBee Alliance has set the long-term target for the BOM for a ZigBee solution to be USD 3.00. Being able to offer the CC2430 as the first- generation All-In-One solution for USD 4,- both efficiently shows that the ZigBee Alliance's long-term cost target is within scope as well as showing Chipcon's commitment to make the ZigBee standard successful" summarizes John Helge Fjellheim, VP Worldwide Sales.

<> About Chipcon AS: (www.chipcon.com)>

Chipcon is a leading semiconductor design and manufacturing company. Chipcon's standard RF ICs provide low-cost, low-power and high-performance RF solutions for a large number of wireless applications. Chipcon's single-chip high-performance RF transceivers and transmitters target low-power wireless applications in the 300 to 1000 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands and are distributed worldwide.

About IEEE 802.15.4: (www.ieee802.org/15/pub/TG4.html)

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is aimed at low-data-rate radio communication solutions with multi-month to multi-year battery life and very low complexity. It is intended to operate in an unlicensed, international frequency band. Potential applications are sensors, interactive toys, smart badges, remote controls, and home/building-automation systems.

About Zigbee: (www.zigbee.com)

The ZigBee Alliance (www.zigbee.org) is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology providers, OEMs and end-users worldwide. Membership is open to all.

The ZigBee Alliance, in collaboration with the IEEE, is defining the network, security, and application layers above the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and MAC layers. This cooperation will result in an easy-to-use, standards-based wireless network platform optimized for wireless monitoring and control applications.