Hitachi SuperH Continues Dominance In Windows CE Solutions With Latest HP Jornada Handheld PC Design Win

Business Wire, March 24, 1999

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 1999--Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. today announced that its SuperH(R) RISC engine will power Hewlett-Packard Company's newly announced HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC. HP's newest Jornada product is one of the highest performance Windows(R) CE-based Handheld PCs on the market and features an easy-to-read, bright color display with pre-installed Microsoft(R) Pocket software based on the Microsoft Windows CE operating system.

The HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC is designed around Hitachi's SH7709A, one of the market leading SH-3 family of RISC processors. SH-3 processors are designed to meet the demanding price/performance and power consumption targets of sophisticated consumer electronics. By utilizing the SH7709A, the HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC delivers 27 percent more battery life than previous generations while offering performance of up to 133 MHz/133 MIPs.

The HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC also takes advantage of Hitachi's HD64461 companion chip that allows this product to offer features including fast IrDA, fast color graphics and PCMCIA and compact flash slot support. The HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC uses SH7709A and HD64461 in Chip Scale Packages (CSP) to shrink component size, resulting in a smaller form factor and reduction in weight.

"In designing the HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC, we wanted to provide our customers with a powerful handheld PC in a very compact package," said Dennis Hamann, worldwide marketing manager for HP's Asia Pacific Personal Computer Division. "Hitachi's chip set offered the best combination of advanced graphics capabilities and processing power in the smallest-possible package."

"This is the third generation of Windows CE-based handheld PCs from HP that have utilized Hitachi's microprocessors," said Steve Imsen, product marketing manager for Hitachi. "HP's selection of the SuperH RISC engine, as well as the companion chip, for its HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC demonstrates the performance and flexibility of this optimized chip set for handheld and mobile applications."

Hitachi's SuperH RISC-based line of CPUs are designed specifically to power a range of Windows CE devices, from low-power portable products, information appliances, performance-oriented Windows-based terminals and the Auto PC. Hitachi has one of the industry's most robust offerings of processors, companion chips and reference platforms for Windows CE, which enables OEM's to reduce their time to market.

About Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc.

Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. - a subsidiary of Hitachi America, Ltd., in turn a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) supports the requirements of the North American marketplace with a broad range of standard and low power semiconductor solutions. Offering some of the industry's most popular RISC microprocessors and memory components among other semiconductor solutions, Hitachi provides chips to the world's leading device manufacturers within industrial, consumer and emerging market applications. Based on 1997 unit shipments, Hitachi is the world's single-largest provider of 32-bit RISC microprocessors and the second-largest provider of microcontrollers and flash memory cards.(a) The Company's substantial design engineering, research and development facilities in the United States help bring the world's best technology to U.S. customers.

Note (a): Microprocessor and flash card market position based on 1997 research data from Semico Research Corp., Phoenix, Ariz. Microcontroller market position based on 1997 research data from Cahners In-Stat Group, Scottsdale, Ariz.

SuperH is a trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. Other products and companies mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Reader Contact Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. 179 E. Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA 95134 Phone: 1-800-285-1601, Ext. 27 FAX: 1-303-297-0447 Hitachi's web site: http://www.hitachi.com/semiconductor Readers outside of North America should contact their local Hitachi representative