CSR Extends its BCHS Bluetooth Host Software to Reach Mobile Phone Makers; HCI Split Brings Increased Performance but Still with Low Cost and Ease of Design.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

RICHARDSON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 16, 2003

CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) has announced it is providing its customers with an extended version of BlueCore Host Software (BCHS).

Called BCHS-HCI, it includes the source code for all layers down to the host controller interface (HCI). With CSR's buyout option, customers are given full access to the source code to enable a much more complete software-based Bluetooth offering which is royalty-free and hence very price competitive for mass market applications such as mobile phones, access points or PDAs. The HCI split also brings performance advantages of full Bluetooth data rates up to 721Kbps and the full piconet support of 7 slaves. BCHS-HCI is available now from www.csr.com.

CSR's BCHS-HCI presents an ideal offering for large volume mobile phone, PDA and access point manufacturers who will appreciate access to Bluetooth's full data rates and full Bluetooth network support while still benefiting from the cost and ease-of design advantages presented by BCHS. CSR's full shrink-wrapped offering is intended to complement BlueCore hardware. It incorporates the necessary Bluetooth profiles and demo applications to give manufacturers a much faster time to market.

BCHS together with the BlueCore IC with embedded Bluetooth core stack is a complete Bluetooth solution from RF to qualified Bluetooth profiles. BCHS includes most of the Bluetooth complexity -- the profiles, security, connection manager and application layers. Users are also given a simple, standard API that remains intact even with the new HCI split. The guide supplied makes it easy to port BCHS to the target platform. These features make it possible to develop a Bluetooth product using BlueCore and BCHS without the requirement for in-depth knowledge of Bluetooth.

BCHS-HCI complements CSR's existing lower cost option BCHS-RFCOMM. This requires less of the host's resources -- only 100KB ROM and 50KB RAM. At half duplex, BCHS-RFCOMM has a lower data rate of 360kbit/s and support for 3 slaves on a piconet -- this compares to the 721kbit/s and 7 slaves support offered by BCHS-HCI. Because both the RFCOMM and HCI variants use the same interface, it is possible for customers to easily upgrade to HCI without the need for complicated redesigning.

BCHS also brings extensive power saving modes ideal for portable devices. Traditional Bluetooth power-down modes of sniff, hold and park remain supported, however, BCHS adds an extended, deep-sleep mode for maximizing battery life. All of these features are intended to enable CSR customers to implement Bluetooth functionality into embedded products quickly, at low cost and with low risk.

Eric Janson, worldwide vice president, marketing, CSR commented, "The higher performance of a HCI split on our leading BCHS software is likely to be very attractive, especially to the price sensitive mobile device manufacturers who demand the maximum Bluetooth performance." Janson continued, "This technological shift has made it possible for us to offer a more competitive product without comprising on the functionality and ease of design of BCHS-RFCOMM."

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 offer 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 Microsoft Corp, NEC, Toshiba, Samsung, 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, 70 percent of available pre-qualified modules, as listed on the qualified products page of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) web site, feature BlueCore and it is in 60 percent 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 at www.csr.com and the CSR partner web site www.btdesigner.com.

More information about Bluetooth can be found on the SIG web site at www.bluetooth.com.