Renesas Technology's superAND Flash Memory Driver Software Gains Symbian OS Compliance; Renesas Technology Joins Symbian Companion Technology Program

Business Wire, Jan 19, 2005

LONDON & TOKYO -- Renesas Technology Corp. (NYSE:HIT)(TSE:6501)(TSE:6503) today announced that the driver software for Renesas Technology's superAND flash memory will be included with Symbian OS(TM) deliveries to Symbian OS licensees. Through the Symbian Companion Technology Program, Renesas Technology will provide handset manufacturers producing smartphones based on Symbian OS an easy and low risk mechanism to evaluate superAND flash memory to their phones. Symbian OS(TM) is licensed to the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers.

The Symbian Companion Technology Program is designed to stimulate and promote innovation by offering Symbian OS licensees, who include Fujitsu, Motorola, Nokia, Sharp and Sony Ericsson, a choice of a wide range of pre-integrated and pre-validated technologies to reduce handset time-to-market and commercial risk. The partners offering companion technologies license their software directly to handset manufacturers should the licensees decide to integrate it with their products.

Driver software usually requires significant investment of time and development resources by a mobile phone manufacturer in order to check its OS compatibility. In some circumstances it can delay the time-to-market of a product. Even though most semiconductor manufacturers now provide such driver software, it is still difficult to gain certified OS compliance, and in most cases driver implementations need further work before they are suitable for release in a product.

Renesas Technology's superAND flash memory is a leading device in the industry to built-in the error correction feature (Note 1), the wear leveling feature (Note 2) and the sector management function (Note 3), so generally the superAND flash memory reduces a system design load. Also, by the adoption of the AG-AND multi level cell technology (Note 4) it realizes high-speed programming and small chip size in same time.

Notes to Editors

(Note 1) The Error Correction Feature:

When an error is detected during READ operation, it is corrected by the memory chip itself.

(Note 2) The Wear Leveling Feature:

The wear levelling feature is a function to even out the number of rewrites. As a chip becomes susceptible to damage if write operations are concentrated locally, when rewrite operation reaches a predetermined number of times, data and addresses are automatically switched to an area in which few rewrites have been performed.

(Note 3) The Sector Management function:

This guarantees 100% error free sectors. The flash memory chip itself will detect and replace any bad sector automatically.

(Note 4) The AG-AND Technology:

The unique AG-AND (Assist Gate) memory cell structure adopts a field isolation method which combines assist gates and floating gates to prevent inter-cell interference. It realizes high speed programming (4MBytes/second at 512 Mb superAND flash memory) and a small chip size by using multi-level cell technology.

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. designs and manufactures highly integrated semiconductor system solutions for mobile, automotive and PC and Audio Visual markets. Established on April 1, 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT)(TSE:6501) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TSE:6503) and headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Renesas Technology is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world and the number one microcontroller supplier globally. Besides microcontrollers, Renesas Technology offers system-on-chip devices, Smart Card ICs, mixed-signal products, flash memories, SRAMs and more.

www.renesas.com.

About Symbian Ltd

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers. The following Symbian OS licensees have Symbian OS-based mobile phones in production and development: Arima, BenQ, Fujitsu for NTT DoCoMo FOMA, LG, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. In 2003, over 6.67 million Symbian OS-based mobile phones were sold worldwide and almost 20 million have been sold to date.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo). For further information about Symbian please see www.symbian.com or email press@symbian.com.