Renesas Technology And Nazomi Partner To Deliver Innovative, Java-Enabled Application Processor Solutions For Next-Generation Mobile Handsets

-September 17, 2003 - Renesas Technology Corp., a leading semiconductor company established by Hitachi, Ltd., and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in April 2003, and Nazomi Communications, Inc., a provider of multimedia application processors and acceleration technology for the Java™ Platform, today announced that the two companies are collaborating to further enhance mobile cell phone performance. Through a cross-licensing agreement, the companies can access each other's leading-edge technologies to deliver high-performance multi-media processors for advanced mobile phones.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nazomi licenses to Renesas its patented acceleration technology for the Java Platform and Renesas licenses to Nazomi intellectual property from the market leading SH-Mobile family of application processors. As a result, the arrangement will bring cost-effective, camera-ready phones that provide greater performance for Java applications, 2D/3D graphics, video, audio and other multimedia applications.

"As today's mobile handsets become more sophisticated, they require optimized architectures for increasing performance while maintaining battery life. This is especially true for phone designs that must seamlessly execute complex multimedia programs such as capturing digital images while also enabling Java applications," said Ikuya Kawasaki, department manager, SoC Design Department 6 at Renesas Technology Corp. "A SH-Mobile application platform that incorporates Nazomi's Java technology is a truly-integrated, highly-effective turn-key solution that gives customers a head start in marketing leading-edge mobile products."

"Hardware acceleration is the superior design approach for delivering the performance that advanced features require. Alternative Java implementations for wireless devices used a software approach, exhibiting poor performance and limiting the complexity of applications," said Jay Kamdar, chief operating officer and vice president of sales and marketing at Nazomi Communications, Inc. "By aligning with Renesas, we can leverage each other's technology strengths and in turn accelerate the deployment of application processor products to meet the rapidly growing demands of the mobile phone market."

The agreement between Renesas and Nazomi has three main goals: to address the growing demand for high performance Java technology in mobile applications, to enable best-in-class application processors, combining the best of both companies and - especially - to make it easier for mobile handset designers to create new mobile products that are highly desirable to end users.

The agreement underscores the common belief of both companies that the convergence of voice, video and data in the mobile wireless industry presents a huge market opportunity for unique Java capable multimedia application processors. In fact, application processors are becoming one of the most critical components in mobile wireless applications, as they help achieve excellent performance while addressing critical system needs for longer battery life, smaller phone sizes, lower cost, and shorter design cycles in competitive global markets. According to a recent report by Seamus McAteer of the Zelos Group, "By 2007, over 450 million phones, or 74% of phones shipped worldwide, will be Java rich Multimedia phones."

"Java technology is enabling a whole class of features and services in mobile phones, including gaming and other downloadable applications that drive carrier revenue," said Allen Leibovitch, Manager of Wireless Semiconductor research at IDC. "The majority of data-enabled phones have already standardized on Java, and hardware acceleration is a key component of an advanced applications processor."

About Renesas SH-Mobile
Renesas' SH-Mobile is a flexible application accelerator that provides multimedia support for next-generation cellular phone communications. Unlike a traditional baseband CPU method that uses a single CPU to manage both signal and application processing, the SH-Mobile design approach uses a dual CPU architecture that dedicates one CPU to application execution in order to maximize communication performance. Built on Renesas' popular SuperH 32-bit RISC superscalar architecture, SH-Mobile devices offers compelling functionality such as the JPEG, MP3, acoustic echo canceller, AMR codec, MPEG4 encode/decode and Java Virtual Machine capabilities that are essential for supporting the high-end multimedia applications of next generation mobile phones. For more information about SH-Mobile, please visit: http://www.renesas.com/eng/products/mpumcu/shmobile/index.html

About Nazomi's Hardware Acceleration Technology for the Java Platform
Nazomi Communications Inc., is the owner of patented Java acceleration technology. Nazomi's technology bridges the gap between the stack-based Java runtime environment and register-based microprocessors. The technology was designed from the ground up with an overall system perspective in mind, resulting in the unique instruction path processing architecture for intermediate languages that offers fully transparent operation, allowing all existing application software, operating system software and other binaries to run as-is. The same transparency also applies to the use of application development tools and debuggers. Nazomi's technology does not require or utilize any system memory, and in fact reduces memory accesses while executing Java software, that results in greatly improved performance and reduced power consumption. The end-user of Nazomi's Java acceleration technology enhanced devices experiences responsive and consistent performance and extended battery life.

About Renesas Technology Corp.
Renesas Technology Corp. designs and manufactures highly integrated semiconductor system solutions for mobile, networking, automotive, industrial and digital home electronics markets. Established on April 1, 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, NYSE:HIT) 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. Readers can find additional product and contact information on the Renesas Technology Web site at www.renesas.com.

About Nazomi Communications
Nazomi Communications, Inc. is a Silicon Valley based fabless semiconductor company focused on providing multimedia application processor solutions to mobile phone makers. Its solutions support processing and performance boosting of Java, video and imaging, 2D/3D graphics, animation, gaming, and other multimedia platforms. In 2003, the company has announced significant technology agreements with Sharp and SK Telecom. Since that time, the company's coprocessor technology and JA108 chip has already been included in over 1 million cell phones. Nazomi's technology is supplied in the form of standalone application processors, combination memory devices and IP cores to well-known mobile phone makers and semiconductor companies. The company is an innovator as it holds fundamental patents on Java hardware acceleration technology. Nazomi, a privately-held company, was founded in September 1998 and is located at 2200 Laurelwood Road, Santa Clara, California, 95054, phone: (408) 654-8988, fax: (408) 654-2938, web: www.nazomi.com.