Oak Technology Launches Programmable System-On-A-Chip Solution for Personal Imaging and Printing Appliances

Oak's Advanced Quatro(TM) Architecture Brings Advantages Of Integrated ARM9E(TM) Core, DSP, and USB 2.0 to the Rapidly Growing Imaging Market

WOBURN, Mass., March 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oak Technology, Inc., a leading provider of embedded solutions for optical-storage and digital-imaging markets, today announced the availability of their OTI-4110, the first in a series of embedded imaging system-on-a-chip (SOC) solutions for the personal imaging and printing markets.

Based on the company's recently announced Quatro architecture, the OTI-4110 is targeted for applications including inkjet and laser MFPs, direct photo printers, set-top box printers, and other personal imaging and printing products that feature one or more PC-independent functions.

Today's personal imaging and printing markets are undergoing a major shift from PC-centric imaging and printing, to PC-independent imaging and printing. Fueling this shift is the growth in digital photography, photo-quality printing, home Internet, and wireless connectivity. As these fast-expanding technologies make their way into the home, they are driving demand for a new class of appliance-type products that allow image-rich content such as digital photos, web pages and scanned documents to be captured, manipulated and printed without using a PC. Embedding the processing and interfacing capabilities traditionally provided by a PC into an appliance-type product requires a new and higher level of device integration.

"The dynamic convergence of the market from PC-centric to PC-independent continues," said Keith Kmetz, director, Multifunction Peripherals and Output Solution at International Data Corporation. "The market now requires personal multifunction peripherals to process digital photography, web pages and other complex images. Oak's OTI-4110 is the first in a family of true SOCs that will address the needs of this evolving market."

Oak's OTI-4110 provides OEMs with a powerful, highly integrated SOC solution that performs all the control processing, image processing and communications processing required in a personal imaging or printing appliance. All that is needed to complete a controller for a personal printing appliance is RAM, ROM, analog interfaces, and current drivers.

"The addition of the OTI-4110 to Oak's product family further complements our position in the market as a complete software and silicon solution provider," said Simon Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Oak's Imaging Group. "The Quatro platform will serve as the basis for a series of innovative SOCs targeting a range of emerging products in the imaging and printing markets. The OTI-4110 represents a significant initial step on our roadmap by extending Oak's leadership position in the office segment of the imaging and printing market into the high-volume personal segment."

The OTI-4110 is differentiated from traditional ASIC solutions by its full programmability. By combining Oak's advanced Quatro DSP core with the ARM® industry-leading CPU core, the OTI-4110 provides OEMs with a fully programmable platform for implementing the feature set and associated image processing required across a range of products. The Quatro DSP core employs a single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) parallel processing design to deliver approximately four times the performance of conventional DSP in image processing applications. Other markets such as cell phones have already taken advantage of the time-to-market benefits of integrated DSP technology. The OTI-4110 brings these same benefits to OEMs in the personal imaging and printing market.

"This announcement is further confirmation of the strong partnership between Oak and ARM, dedicated to providing imaging customers with powerful and flexible products, which opens up new possibilities for intelligent consumer printing devices," said Steve Evans, vice president, Segment Marketing, ARM.

ARM946E-S(TM) CPU Core

The OTI-4110 provides both the processing performance and integrated interfaces required for the next generation of personal imaging and printing appliances. To perform the system control and communications functions, the OTI-4110 incorporates an ARM946E-S 32-bit CPU core with a 4 Kbyte instruction cache and 4 Kbyte data cache. The OTI-4110's ARM946E-S core operates at up to 160 MHz to deliver up to 180 MIPS.

Quatro DSP Core

The OTI-4110's quad-processor Quatro DSP core performs the image processing functions required in a personal imaging or printing appliance. The OTI-4110's Quatro DSP core has a 4 Kbyte instruction cache and 32 Kbyte embedded data memory. It operates at up to 210 MHz to deliver an impressive 840 million multiply-accumulates per second (MMACS). To ensure that the Quatro DSP's processors do not stall to wait for data, the 128-bit bus between the Quatro DSP core's registers and data memory provides sustained transfer rates of up to 3.36 million bytes per second. Together this processing bandwidth and data transfer bandwidth enables the OTI-4110 to deliver throughput of 2.8 Mpixels per second in a typical color copying application, which is equivalent to 5 color pages per minute (ppm) on 600-dpi Letter-sized pages. For a typical monochrome copying application, the OTI-4110 delivers throughput of 16.8 Mpixels per second, which is equivalent to 30 monochrome ppm on 600-dpi Letter-size pages.

Programmable Mechanism Control Interface

To ensure that no additional ASICs are needed to control custom mechanisms, the OTI-4110 integrates a programmable mechanism control interface. This interface allows the OTI-4110 to control motors and other mechanisms, such as inkjet print heads, without burdening the ARM946E-S core with real-time control.

Memory Card Interface

To enable OEMs to easily incorporate one or more memory card slots, the OTI-4110 integrates a memory card interface that provides direct support for all four major standards (CompactFlash(TM), Memory Stick®, Secure Digital(TM), and SmartMedia(TM)). This interface supports both memory cards and I/O cards such as Bluetooth cards.

USB 2.0 Interface

The new USB 2.0 hi-speed connectivity standard, which provides data transfer rates of up to 60 Mbytes per second, is quickly replacing the broadly deployed USB 1.1 as the dominant standard for connecting PCs with peripherals. To enable OEMs to incorporate USB 2.0 into their products a cost-effective manner, the OTI-4110 integrates a complete USB 2.0 solution made up of a controller core, licensed from ARC International, and a physical layer core, licensed from inSilicon Corporation. Oak has worked closely with these leading connectivity core providers to put together a world-class embedded USB 2.0 solution. "ARC is proud to continue to support and extend our relationship with Oak to advance the adoption of USB's 480-Mbps communication capabilities," said Farzad Zarrinfar, senior vice president of marketing and business development at ARC International.

Efficient Development Environment

To assist shortened time-to-market for OEMs, Oak provides a complete C programming environment based on the ARM Developer Suite(TM) software. To these proven ARM tools Oak integrates a set of tools for programming the Quatro DSP including a C compiler, assembler, linker, simulator, debugger, and libraries. The ARM simulator together with the DSP simulator allow OEMs to fully develop and debug their system firmware and image processing firmware in simulation on a PC. Oak's extensive library of optimized image processing algorithms allows OEMs to put together customized image processing pipelines quickly and easily.

The OTI-4110 will be packaged in a 260-ball BGA package. General availability of engineering samples is targeted for June 2002. For more information on Oak Technology and its printing solutions, please visit www.oaktech.com or contact Oak's Imaging Group at 781-638-7500.

Oak's Imaging Group

Oak's Imaging Group is a leading provider of software, imaging processors and system-on-a-chip solutions to the world's top printer OEMs including Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh, Sharp, Toshiba TEC and Xerox. Oak Technology supplies peripheral technology to more than 40 OEMs worldwide, representing 80 percent of the printing peripheral market. Oak's imaging products include Integrated Print System(TM) (IPS)(TM) Page Description Language emulations (PCL, PostScript and PDF); imaging compression/decompression (iCodec) processors for digital imaging; and Imaging Digital Signal Processors (iDSP).

About Oak Technology

Oak Technology, Inc., a leading provider of solutions for the storage, manipulation and distribution of digital content, is committed to driving the emerging world of connected Information Appliances. The company's fully integrated products and technologies target two key markets: optical storage (CD-RW and DVD for PC and consumer) and digital imaging (advanced copiers, printers, faxes, scanners and MFPs). Founded in 1987, Oak is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has sales offices, design centers and research facilities around the world. The company trades on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the symbol OAKT. Additional information about Oak and its digital solutions can be found at www.oaktech.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: In addition to the historical information contained herein, statements in this press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal securities laws and are subject to the safe harbors created thereby. Forward-looking statements herein include but not limited to the amount and time of potential purchases of the company's Common Stock. These statements involve risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual future events or results. The following are among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements: factors that could cause actual outcome to differ materially from those set forth include, without limitation, the rate of adoption of new technology, the rate of growth of Imaging markets, changes in product mix or distribution channels; the demand for semiconductors, printer software and end-user products that incorporate semiconductors and printer software; technological difficulties and resource constraints encountered in developing and/or introducing new products, and market acceptance of new products. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release regarding expected financial results, industry trends, sales and future product development and business strategies and activities should be considered in light of these factors, and those factors discussed from time to time in the Company's public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, such as those discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10K for fiscal year ended June 30, 2000, and in quarterly reports on Form 10Q.

NOTE: Oak Technology is a registered trademark of Oak Technology, Inc. and the Oak logo, Integrated Print System, IPS and Quatro are common law trademarks of Oak Technology, Inc. CompactFlash is a trademark of ScanDisk Corporation. Memory Stick is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation. Secure Digital and Smart Media are trademarks of Toshiba Corporation. All others are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited. ARM946E-S and ARM Developer Suite are trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and Nasdaq: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM, Taiwan; and ARM France SAS.