NEC Electronics Announces SerDes ASIC Macro for OBSAI RP3

Kawasaki (Japan), Duesseldorf (Germany), Santa Clara (Calif., USA),

December 15, 2003 – NEC Electronics Corporation and its subsidiaries in the United States and Europe, NEC Electronics America, Inc. and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, announced today the SerDes macro to meet the specifications of Reference Point 3 (RP3) of the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI). OBSAI is a group of nearly 70 leading manufacturers of wireless infrastructure equipment, related modules and components working to standardize the interfaces between different base station modules. The RP3 specification was recently finalized and defines the interface between the baseband processing and radio components of a wireless base station. Data rates of 768 Mbps and 1.536 Gbps have been defined using XAUI-type Common Mode Logic (CML) transceivers.

NEC Electronics is a long-time supplier of SerDes macros to serialise and de-serialise high-speed data streams and provide reliable data transmission. The new high-speed interface macro has been designed for NEC Electronics’ CB-130 ASIC technology. It includes multiple transmit units with a parallel-to-serial (P/S) converter, multiple receive units consisting of clock and data recovery (CDR) drivers, a serial-to-parallel converter (S/P) and a receiver. A common part integrates the PLL, bias generator and test logic, and controls up to 16 channels simultaneously. Additionally, the 8-bit/10-bit coders and decoders are available as macros to further complete the offer to ASIC designers.

“As a member of OBSAI, NEC Electronics is working to meet the needs of the wireless infrastructure industry and now offers the macros required to implement the new specifications”, said Tetsuo Yoshino, general manager 1st Custom LSI Division of NEC Electronics. “This surely will help the industry achieve the ultimate goal of OBSAI: to provide well-defined modules that are interoperable among different manufacturers, provide a cost advantage to the entire mobile industry and promote third-generation mobile phone systems”.

NEC Electronics worldwide specializes in semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the high-end computing and broadband networking markets; system solutions for the mobile handsets, PC peripherals, automotive and digital consumer markets; and platform solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics Corporation has 24 subsidiaries worldwide including NEC Electronics America, Inc. and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH. In addition to marketing, selling and supporting NEC Electronics products to customers in their respective regions, NEC Electronics America and NEC Electronics Europe also operate local manufacturing facilities in Roseville, California, and Ballivor, Ireland, respectively. Additionally, NEC Electronics America is the North American sales and marketing channel of NEC AM-LCD and PDP modules, and NEC Electronics (Europe) is the sales and marketing channel in Europe for these products. NEC Electronics Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l), one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions.

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Sunrise Electronics is the only dedicated franchised distributor in the UK electronics market and provides a high level of technical design support to customers for the whole range of NEC semiconductor products including microprocessors, microcontrollers and ASICs as well as memory and colour LCD panels. The field sales team is technically qualified to ensure total support from design concept through to purchasing.

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