Sharp Microelectronics Forms Strategic Partnership with Logic Product Development to Streamline Customers' Product Development

Business Wire, Jan 22, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CAMAS, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2003

Strategic Partnership Speeds Time-to-Market for Sharp's BlueStreak

Customers, Providing Access to Product-ready Hardware

and Software Solutions

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas and Logic Product Development (Logic) today announce a strategic partnership that will accelerate time-to-market for Sharp's BlueStreak(TM) Microcontroller (MCU) and System-on-Chip (SoC) customers by providing access to product-ready hardware and software solutions.

As a result of time-to-market pressure and integration challenges, design engineers now seek a higher level of customer support from silicon vendors. The Sharp and Logic partnership is the latest strategic alliance in Sharp's third-party partner network and allows BlueStreak customers to reduce product development time, cost, and risk by utilizing product-ready solutions. This enables customers to focus on creating innovative applications and solutions for their marketplace.

Logic engineers are experienced in developing hardware and software solutions for Sharp's BlueStreak MCUs and SoCs. Logic will offer a variety of products (Application Development Kits, Board Support Packages, and Card Engines) as well as a full service product development group that can tailor its capabilities to meet the needs of BlueStreak customers.

"Sharp focuses on a system solution for its BlueStreak customers," said Terry Thomas, director of marketing, Microcontrollers and System-on-Chip, for Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas. "We are committed to providing high performance MCUs and SoCs that plug and play with other Sharp components, such as LCDs, imagers, and Flash memories, and also to developing the key third-party partnerships for our customers to quickly and easily access software drivers, OS ports and low-cost development tools."

Logic's first embedded platform solution for Sharp BlueStreak customers will be the Zoom(TM) Starter Development Kit for Sharp's BlueStreak LH79520 SoC, which will eliminate cost barriers for engineers that want to evaluate the SoC and Card Engine performance and functionality.

The Zoom Starter Development Kit includes a compact (2.37" x 2.67") Card Engine, which is a single board computer containing Flash memory, SDRAM memory, touch panel support, Serial, Audio Codec, Ethernet, and an optional Linux BSP. The Card Engine has a bootloader/monitor loaded in Flash memory, allowing designers to download images and applications to the Card Engine. It will also include an application board that has connections to all of the Card Engine specific peripherals and signals for application development, prototyping, and debugging. In addition, the kit will include GNU cross development tool chain for ARM targets for use with PC hosts running Windows 2000/Cygwin or Linux operating systems.

"Working together, Sharp and Logic can provide customers with a complete product-ready solution that can be delivered to the market in less time, less cost, less risk and with more innovation," said Troy Kopischke, COO & Vice President of Embedded Platform Solutions, for Logic Product Development. "Our integrated approach and quality systems enable multiple disciplines to work concurrently on product development activities, greatly reducing development time and accelerating market launch. Dedicated teams combine user research, design, technology and manufacturing to create innovative new products and product categories that help our customers gain a competitive advantage."

The LH79520 is a highly integrated SoC specifically designed to meet the performance, power consumption and cost requirements of engineers designing mobile handheld applications. The Starter Kit developed for the BlueStreak LH79520 SoC is a reference design, designed to scale with the OEM's product roadmap. Customers will be able to seamlessly plug in Sharp's next generation BlueStreak MCUs and SoCs into the same application board. Sharp and Logic plan to extend the partnership to include Sharp's full line of 16- and 32-bit BlueStreak MCUs and SoCs.

The Zoom Starter Development Kit for Sharp's BlueStreak LH79520 SoC will be available in late January 2003. For more information on the Zoom Starter Development Kit, visit www.logicpd.com. Sharp's BlueStreak LH79520 SoC is available now. For more information, visit www.sharpsma.com/sma/products/MCUSoC.

About BlueStreak MCUs and SoCs

The BlueStreak line from Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas is a family of highly integrated 8-, 16- and 32-bit Microcontrollers (MCUs) and System-on-Chips (SoCs) targeted at mobile information appliances, home and office automation and industrial applications. All of Sharp's BlueStreak products are designed to meet specific engineering design challenges by offering a high level of integration to maximize performance and reduce power consumption. SMA is committed to offer "system-level" MCU/SoC products to help customers reduce component count, board space and power requirements. In order to provide full engineering support to customers and help accelerate their time-to-market, Sharp has based its designs on popular CPU cores including the 8051, ARM720T(TM) and the ARM922T. For more information on the BlueStreak line, visit http://www.sharpsma.com/sma/products/MCUSoC.