K-micro and AnSem form a strategic partnership to develop chipsets for the home networking market

The first product that has been developed is an AFE (Analog Front End) chip that enables higher performance, lower cost home network devices

SAN JOSE, CALIF. and LEUVEN, BELGIUM –May 14, 2008 – K-micro, a leader in advanced ASICs, and AnSem, a leading analog design services company, today announced a strategic partnership to develop and deliver advanced chipsets for the home networking market, The first products to be delivered are Analog Front Ends (AFEs). Consumers will benefit from the higher performance and lower cost of home networking devices made with these AFEs.
“By teaming up with AnSem, K-micro will be able to bring chipsets that enable higher performance, lower cost home networking products to market more quickly,” said Tommy Aizawa, VP of Strategic Marketing at K-micro. “Combining AnSem’s analog design expertise with K-micro’s ASIC capabilities enables us to provide new and innovative products for the home networking market, beginning with AFEs.”

Jan Crols, CTO of AnSem, said, “AFEs are used in virtually all home network devices. They are state of the art mixed-signal circuits that require a highly skilled development team and an advanced tool flow. Therefore, we are delighted to team with K-micro to offer this technology as we have collaborated successfully before to deliver market ready and production compliant products.”

About AnSem

Based in Leuven, Belgium, AnSem is a fabless IC design house founded in 1998 specializing in the development of the most advanced analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for RF CMOS, high-speed data communication, data acquisition and ultra low-power & low-voltage applications. AnSem is a proven and solid development partner worldwide for customers requiring custom design, IP based design and full turnkey solutions. For more information visit www.ansem.com.

About K-micro (Kawasaki Microelectronics America, Inc.)

K-micro’s innovative ASIC technologies and world-class design support are used in the consumer electronics, computer, office-automation, networking and storage markets. The company is an active participant in industry standards organizations, including InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) Technical Committee T10 for SCSI Storage Interfaces, Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), USB Implementers Forum, Digital Universal Plug and Play Forum (UPnP), the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG), Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA), Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), and OCP International Partnership (OCP-IP). K-micro has design centers in San Jose, Taipei, and Tokyo. For more information, contact the company at 408-570-0555, or visit http://www.k-micro.us.