Oki Semiconductor Introduces First ARM9 Core Family-Based Engine Control Unit for the Automobile Industry

Sunnyvale, CA, November 4, 2002 -- Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, , today unveiled the ML67Q2003 - the industry's first ARM9™ core family-based 32-bit Engine Control Unit for the automotive market. The ML67Q2003 offers car makers the many benefits associated with non-proprietary, ARMr cores, including greater leverage of engineering resources, reduced design costs and risks, and shorter time-to-market.

Oki's ML67Q2003 represents the first ARM core-based engine control unit currently available, offering auto design engineers immediate opportunities to take advantage of standard products for current and future design needs. The engine control unit is

QS-9000 compliant, and features a high-performance ARM966E-S™ core-based CPU, and an ARM VFP-9™ vector floating-point co-processor built on a bus-centric AIEC™ platform. The unit also comes with 1 Mbyte of embedded flash memory and 48Kbyte of SRAM.

"Today's announcement of the ML67Q2003 is yet another strong example of Oki Semiconductor's commitment to bringing the ARM advantage to various markets - in this case, offering automotive designers a powerful solution with better pricing and broader alternative sources, " said Ike Saeed, vice president of marketing for Oki Semiconductor. "This open, highly scalable solution also gives auto designers a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and the flexibility to increase the performance and functionality."

In teaming with ARM, Oki has been responding to the growing desire among its customers to move away from the uncertainties, inflexibility and higher costs associated with proprietary MCU designs. The company has made a strategic commitment to becoming a leader in ARM core-based solutions to address that market shift, and is well positioned to take advantage of its emergence.

"The ARM partnership with Oki Semiconductor will bring several advantages to automotive customers. In this case, by selecting the ARM966E-S core for its engine control unit, Oki's ECU is able to handle more complex combustion monitoring to further improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions," said John Rayfield, VP, US Marketing, ARM. "In addition, the VFP9 co-processor will speed development, enabling engineers to really benefit from model-based control methods, mapping their simulations more accurately to the target system."

"Ultimately, this partnership benefits both companies - allowing ARM to showcase its enhanced signal processing capabilities to speed performance and development, while enabling Oki to offer its automotive customers flexibility in increasing future performance at a lower cost with an ARM core-based solution," Rayfield added.

The engine control unit acts as the central control system of a car, determining a wide range of essential engine functions including throttle, timing, oil temperature and pressure, battery, transmission, and brakes. This system helps deliver increased fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, as well as impacting transmission and suspension systems, rollover control and more.

Oki's ML67Q2003 is QS-9000 compliant and includes the following features:

Price and Availability

Sample pricing of Oki Semiconductor's ML67Q2003 is $23 for one million parts per year.

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, network, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, laser, networking, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller 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 subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available at www.okisemi.com/us.

Oki Semiconductor the Right Partner for a Digital World™.ARM, ARM9 and AMBA is a registered trademark of ARM Limited. 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. AIEC is a registered trademark of AIEC. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders