Renesas Technology Starts Sample Shipments of SH-Mobile G3 System LSI Jointly Developed With NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson for 3G Mobile Phone Handsets

-- Renesas Technology Corp. today announced that it has begun shipping the SH-Mobile G3, a high-speed, high-performance system LSI, which was jointly developed with NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Fujitsu Limited, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Sharp Corporation, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications for 3G mobile phones. Shipments of evaluation samples to these handset manufacturers started in October 2007. Powered by the G3 system LSI, the jointly developed 3G mobile phone platform(1) is targeted for completion in Q3 CY2008.

The SH-Mobile G3 is a single-chip LSI which supports HSDPA cat. 8(2) data transfer at up to 7.2 Mbps and dual-mode communications including W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS. It enables high-speed data transfer via mobile phones and is suitable for use in a wide variety of handset models for the Japanese and international markets. In addition, the chip integrates both a baseband processor for communication processing and an application processor with enhanced functions. For example, it enables high-level graphics processing with support for large LCD screens such as WVGA (864 x 480 pixels), as well as high-quality audio processing.

Previous mobile phone joint development efforts include the SH-Mobile G1, a single-chip LSI for dual-mode handsets supporting W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS. Since the first joint development announcement of NTT DoCoMo and Renesas in July 2004, the G1 entered mass production in the fall of 2006 and it is now used in a variety of mobile phone models. In February 2006, NTT DoCoMo, Renesas, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, and Sharp announced plans to develop a unified 3G mobile phone platform, which consists of the SH-Mobile G2 and supporting software, with extended functionality including HSDPA for fast data transfer (max. 3.6 Mbps). The G2 platform is currently under development, and the handsets powered the G2 platform are scheduled to appear in the market from fall 2007.

Building on the success, the latest SH-Mobile G3 and the associated mobile phone platform announced in February 2007 will further extend the functionality and support for high-speed communication (up to 7.2 Mbps with HSDPA cat. 8). Once the development work is completed in fall 2008, the full-scale adoption of the G3 is expected to bring mobile handsets with more advanced multimedia functionality as well as increased demand for the ability to quickly download large volumes of data, such as high-resolution images for large screen displays. The new platform will simplify the development process of mobile handsets by providing advanced functions and helping to shorten development time.

The new mobile phone platform will be a unified implementation which incorporates the G3, a jointly developed reference design including peripheral chipsets such as audio/power and RF font-end modules, and base software which includes Symbian OS(TM), a board support package, and multimedia middleware.

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. is one of the world's leading semiconductor system solutions providers for mobile, automotive and PC/AV (Audio Visual) markets and the world's No.1 supplier of microcontrollers. It is also a leading provider of LCD Driver ICs, Smart Card microcontrollers, RF-ICs, High Power Amplifiers, Mixed Signal ICs, System-on-Chip (SoC), System-in-Package (SiP) and more. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TOKYO:6501 - News; NYSE:HIT - News) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO:6503 - News), Renesas Technology achieved consolidated revenue of 953 billion JPY in FY2006 (end of March 2007). Renesas Technology is based in Tokyo, Japan and has a global network of manufacturing, design and sales operations in around 20 countries with about 26,500 employees worldwide. For further information, please visit http://www.renesas.com