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Frontier Silicon & Samsung develop world's first DAB solution for mobile handsets

Smallest, lowest power DAB module to date makes debut at 3G in Cannes

Cannes, 23rd February 2004: Samsung Electro-Mechanics, one of the world's leading suppliers of electronic tuners, and Frontier Silicon - the world's leading supplier of DAB chips - have announced the two companies have cooperated to develop a miniature low power DAB receiver module specifically targeted for integration into mobile phone handsets and other communications devices such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) and smartphones.

The module from Samsung Electro-Mechanics measures just 30mm x 38mm and is only 2.5mm high, to meet one of the most important requirements in space constrained mobile phone handsets.

"We are seeing increasing interest from mobile phone manufacturers in the integration of DAB, both for audio and data applications" said C.K. Nam, manager, of the broadcast systems team at Samsung Electro-Mechanics. "By cooperating with Frontier Silicon we have been able to provide our customers with a small and low-powered module that can be used to realise this requirement."

"We are delighted to have been able to work with Samsung Electro-Mechanics on this market leading development," said Steve Evans, VP sales of Frontier Silicon. "Their ability to engineer a DAB solution in such a tiny form factor with the requisite lower power consumption opens up the possibility of adding DAB to an exciting array of volume-manufactured products."

Based on the Chorus DAB processor, which is already at the heart of more than 600,000 DAB radios, the new module specially developed for mobile phone handsets has the capability to decode DAB across all of the audio and data bandwidths required by the DAB standard. It includes the RF front end, the baseband circuits and its own embedded memory. It operates as a slave module, which is controlled by the mobile phone's system processor over a serial interface. Chorus utilises multithreaded META processor and DAB technology licensed from Imagination Technologies.

The new module is sampling now and will be available in mass production during Q3 2004.

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About Frontier Silicon

Frontier Silicon is at the forefront of the digital revolution with a range of semiconductor solutions for digital TV, digital radio and other emerging consumer multimedia products. As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon's core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices. Key customers for these products include consumer electronic, automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers. In digital radio (DAB), the company's chips are found in the world's leading brands including Bush, Goodmans, Grundig, Ministry of Sound, Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Cambridge Audio and TEAC.

Contact

Anthony Sethill, CEO
Frontier Silicon
Tel: +44 (0) 1923 474200
Fax: +44 (0)1923 202251
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