Nations' Latest BLE 5 IC Powered By CEVA Bluetooth Low Energy IP

ROCKVILLE, Md., Feb. 23, 2021 -- CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies, today announced that Nations Technologies Inc. ("Nations"), a leader in China's information security IC design industry, has licensed and deployed CEVA's RivieraWaves Bluetooth® low energy IP in its NZ8801 Bluetooth 5 IC designed to provide secure connectivity in a range of power sensitive devices, including wearables, PC peripherals, secure payment cards and the smart home. NZ8801 has already achieved significant success in the market, shipping in tens of millions devices to date.

The NZ8801 IC features a 32-bit high performance, low power consumption processor, and connects and communicates with other devices through standard Bluetooth protocol. It is designed with a single terminal antenna and integrates a number of components which reduce overall BOM costs and application complexity. It can also work with external MCUs to meet various power-sensitive applications.

"We are pleased to announce our relationship with CEVA to integrate their Bluetooth low energy IP into our BLE5 IC," said Liang Jie, V.P. of Nations. "CEVA's track record in developing the lowest power connectivity IPs is unrivalled and perfectly aligns with our performance requirements for integrating Bluetooth into our security ICs and other IoT chips."

"CEVA and Nations have established an excellent working relationship, which culminated in the successful introduction of Nations' first Bluetooth-enabled IC to the market," said Ange Aznar, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT Business Unit at CEVA. "This IC has featured in wearables from many top tier OEMs and has recently been designed into fingerprint payment cards for password-free authentication. We're excited to continue our partnership and work with Nations to address the countless opportunities out there for ultra-low power, secure Bluetooth applications."

The NZ8801 IC is available now from Nations and its distribution partners. Learn more at https://www.nationstech.com/en/8801en/.

About RivieraWaves Bluetooth

CEVA's RivieraWaves Bluetooth IP platforms provide comprehensive solutions for both Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth dual mode connectivity. Each platform consists of a hardware baseband controller, plus a feature-rich software protocol stack. A flexible radio interface allows the platforms to be deployed with either RivieraWaves RF or various partners' RF IP, enabling optimal selection of foundry and process node. All the latest features of Bluetooth are supported, including Isochronous Channels for LE Audio, Direction Finding (AoA/AoD), Randomized Advertising Channel Indexing, Periodic Advertising Sync Transfer, GATT Caching and other enhancements. With more than 2 billion devices shipped to date and dozens of licensees, the RivieraWaves Bluetooth IP is widely deployed in consumer and IoT devices with many of the world's leading semiconductors companies and OEMs, including smartphones, tablets, wireless speakers, wireless headsets and earbuds, hearing aids and other wearables. For more information on RivieraWaves Bluetooth IP platforms, go to https://www.ceva-dsp.com/product/rivierawaves-bluetooth-platforms/

About Nations Technologies Inc.

Nations Technologies Inc. ("Nations") is a leader in China's information security IC design industry and a national high-tech enterprise. With 20 years of leadership in commercial cryptography application, it has a national-level postdoctoral research station. Established in 2000, it is one of the integrated circuit design enterprises undertaking the national "909" special project of very large scale integrated circuit. Listed in the GEM Board in 2010 (stock code: 300077), it is the Deputy Chairman Member unit of China Association for Public Companies. Headquartered in Shenzhen, the company has established branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi'an, Hong Kong, Singapore and Los Angeles. Find out more at www.nationstech.com.

About CEVA, Inc.

CEVA is the leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies. We offer Digital Signal Processors, AI processors, wireless platforms and complementary software for sensor fusion, image enhancement, computer vision, voice input and artificial intelligence, all of which are key enabling technologies for a smarter, connected world. We partner with semiconductor companies and OEMs worldwide to create power-efficient, intelligent and connected devices for a range of end markets, including mobile, consumer, automotive, robotics, industrial and IoT. Our ultra-low-power IPs include comprehensive DSP-based platforms for 5G baseband processing in mobile and infrastructure, advanced imaging and computer vision for any camera-enabled device and audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets. For sensor fusion, our Hillcrest Labs sensor processing technologies provide a broad range of sensor fusion software and IMU solutions for AR/VR, robotics, remote controls, and IoT. For artificial intelligence, we offer a family of AI processors capable of handling the complete gamut of neural network workloads, on-device. For wireless IoT, we offer the industry's most widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (low energy and dual mode), Wi-Fi 4/5/6 (802.11n/ac/ax) and NB-IoT. Visit us at www.ceva-dsp.com.