Toshiba Helps Global Locate Meet 6-Month Time-To-Market Window And Reduce Cost With Marlin A-GPS Custom SOC For Advanced 3G Handsets And Smartphones

Selection of Toshiba Ultra Low-Power 130nm Process Technology Results in Highly Integrated Custom SoC that Lets Handset Designers Increase Range and Battery Life through an Enhanced Power Budget

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 4, 2006— Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC)*, today announced that Global Locate, Inc., a leading provider of Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) technology to the mobile wireless market, selected the Toshiba Corporation (Toshiba) ultra low-power 130 nanometer (nm) process technology and its leading-edge custom SoC design services to enable early market entry at a significant engagement cost savings. Global Locate’s Marlin™ chipset is an A-GPS solution for advanced 3G handsets and smartphones that adds location-based services to wireless devices that may already integrate a mobile phone, personal digital assistant, digital camera or other information appliances. At the heart of the Marlin solution is a massively parallel correlation engine that allows it to search all possible satellite ranges simultaneously to acquire outdoor satellite signals in fraction of a second. Toshiba delivered the Global Locate custom SoC in just 6 months from quality netlist to working prototype and the chip is currently in high-volume production.

“Global Locate selected Toshiba because of its state-of-the-art, low-power 130nm CMOS process and broad design-services offering,” said Donald L. Fuchs, executive vice president of business development at Global Locate, Inc.  “Our engagement with Toshiba resulted in a first-spin success, allowing the Marlin chip to come to market ahead of schedule.” Global Locate performed an extensive evaluation and concluded that Toshiba stood out from the alternatives both strategically and tactically.  Global Locate determined that the Toshiba 130nm business-ready solution reduced design-cycle time and lowered risk.  The company found that Toshiba offered proven, low-power, mature libraries and demonstrated an excellent track record of success.  Toshiba worked closely with Global Locate to provide a turnkey solution that allowed Global Locate to achieve the required level of power reduction needed for its product while lowering the non-recurring cost.

“The collaborative teams from Global Locate and Toshiba met the Global Locate market window, allowing Global Locate to introduce an innovative product into a high-potential growth market while meeting cost and performance targets.  Global Locate’s custom SoC allows handset vendors to come to market faster and reduce their overall costs for low-power handsets,” said Dr. Rakesh Sethi, director of business development in the Custom SoC and Foundry Business Unit at TAEC.  

“The Global Locate design goal was to lower the active and standby power of the signal-processing engine, along with achieving high levels of integration,” Dr. Sethi continued.  “We used a high-yield Design-for-Manufacturing (DFM) design flow and our proven, low-power 130nm process technology to expedite the development and delivery of an advanced single-chip SoC.”  The Global Locate single-chip SoC lets handset designers increase range and battery life through an enhanced power budget.

To reduce power consumption, Toshiba applied its multi-VDD and multi-Vth libraries and segmented the core into several islands with each island supporting reduced voltages. Custom low-height I/Os further reduced power and die size while lowering cost.  Due to the lower power consumption, a lower-cost Toshiba package could be utilized; this helped achieve the reduced board and system costs critical to the application.  High yields and a fast ramp up to volume production were accomplished using advanced wire spreading and DFM rules for yield management.

For more information on the Global Locate collaborative experience in the Toshiba SoC World, please visit:  http://www.toshiba.com/taec/adinfo/socworld/casestudies_GlobalLocate.html.  The website recognizes customers whose advanced ICs are making a difference in the Toshiba Custom SoC World.

About Global Locate, Inc.

Global Locate, Inc. is a privately held company that provides Assisted-GPS products and services for wireless devices and networks.  Headquartered in San Jose, CA, the company has sales offices in the New York metropolitan area, Tokyo, Taipei and Madrid. Global Locate’s A-GPS product suite includes the Worldwide Reference Network (WWRN), A-GPS Server and integrated Global Locate IndoorGPS® chipset. For more information see www.globallocate.com.

About TAEC

Combining quality and flexibility with design engineering expertise, TAEC brings a breadth of advanced, next-generation technologies to its customers.  This broad offering includes memory and flash memory-based storage solutions, a broad range of discrete devices, displays, medical tubes, ASICs, custom SOCs, microprocessors, microcontrollers and wireless components for the computing, wireless, networking, automotive and digital consumer markets.

TAEC is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corp. (Toshiba), Japan’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and the world’s fourth largest semiconductor manufacturer.  In more than 130 years of operation, Toshiba has recorded numerous firsts and made many valuable contributions to technology and society.  For additional company and product information, please visit TAEC’s website at chips.toshiba.com.