CSR BlueCore2-PC Brings One Stop Shop Bluetooth Solution to PC Manufacturers.

Business Editors, Technology Writers

RICHARDSON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 2002

CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) has announced that its second-generation Bluetooth chip, BlueCore(TM)2, is now available in a package designed for desktop PCs.

BlueCore2-PC includes all of the elements needed to design a Bluetooth-enabled PC and enables fast time to market, ease of design, and low-risk and easy installation, making it easy for PC manufacturers to bring Bluetooth to their desktop PC motherboard designs.

The low cost and compact design of CSR's BlueCore minimizes the cost of adding Bluetooth to a PC motherboard both in terms of price and size. Currently, the most common method of Bluetooth-enabling desktop PCs is done using USB dongles. Taking Bluetooth onto the motherboard simplifies the process and ensures that the end user has full Bluetooth support integrated into their PC. At the recent WinHEC conference in Seattle, Microsoft confirmed their commitment to Bluetooth and announced they would be launching Bluetooth mouse and keyboard devices -- a factor which will is expected to increase demand for Bluetooth in PCs.

Given the nature of a Bluetooth connection, a PC with onboard Bluetooth chip will be able to control up to seven slave devices with the desktop PC operating as the master. Connections to peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner; synchronizing PDAs and other digital devices; even wireless networking for the home or office via access points -- are all made possible with a Bluetooth connection to the PC.

Eric Janson, vice president CSR North America commented, "The advent of Bluetooth designed into the motherboard is a very exciting development for CSR. Using BlueCore's complete solution, PC motherboard manufacturers will be able to integrate Bluetooth at a low cost and without taking up much space on the board."

Janson continued, "We expect to partner with a variety of leading PC manufacturers to Bluetooth-enable their designs and thus help to accelerate its wide-scale deployment."

About CSR

CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) specializes in providing single-chip radio devices to the global market for short-range wireless communications, including Bluetooth(TM). The company's mission is to create the most highly integrated radio devices available, fabricated using standard CMOS technology, to provide its customers with the lowest cost of ownership of high quality digital radio.

CSR was the first company in the world to offer a true single-chip Bluetooth solution with BlueCore, a fully integrated 2.4 GHz radio, baseband and microcontroller. In Q4 2001 CSR released BlueCore2, its second-generation family, and offers developed hardware/software bundles for each of the fastest growing Bluetooth applications markets. Users can combine the chips with the CSR Bluetooth software stack to provide a fully compliant solution for data and voice communications or, used with an upper layer host software stack, CSR is able to offer a complete Bluetooth end-to-end solution.

CSR has a growing list of major international companies including Sony, Compaq, IBM, Fujitsu, LG, ALPS, TDK, 3Com, Mitsumi, Siemens and Motorola, who have already used CSR's BlueCore in the development of a range of Bluetooth products. In fact, up to the end of 2001, 70% of available pre-qualified modules, as listed on the qualified products page of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) web site, feature BlueCore01 and it is in 60% of all qualified Bluetooth v 1.1 enabled end product designs.

CSR is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with offices in Richardson, Texas; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore and Aalborg, Denmark.

More information about CSR can be found on the web site at www.csr.com.