California Micro Devices Announces the Next Generations Parallel Printer Port Filters.

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 1998--California Micro Devices Corporation (NASDAQ/NMS:CAMD) today announced its Super 1284, the next generations parallel port termination and filter product to succeed its highly successful PAC 1284.

Through the use of second generation P/Active thin film technology, CMD has enhanced the functionality of its popular two chip 1284 parallel port termination and filter device while simultaneously reducing it to a single chip, extremely cost effective solution.

According to Jeffrey Kalb, CMD's CEO and President: "This is an unparalleled level of integration, even for Thin Film passives. The single chip Super 1284 replaces 25 resistors, 17 capacitors, and 17 ESD protection devices, with one small QSOP package. This saves a tremendous amount of valuable board space and eliminates over 50 connections, thereby improving system reliability and quality.

"At $0.63 in million piece quantities, this is by far the most economical combination of functionality available. The Super 1284 has been priced to be competitive with other solutions that don't even have ESD protection capability."

"There are over 200 million parallel port connections shipped every year and we intend to get our share of this market," said Kalb. "The original PAC1284 has become the industry's first standard thin film Integrated Passive Device, with multiple companies producing second source products. But none of the competitors have successfully solved the problem of integrating ESD protection into their devices, and we're now on our second generation with that capability."

In producing this new product, California Micro Devices has enhanced the Electro Static Discharge (ESD) protection to provide 8KV of tolerance using the traditional Human Body Model (HBM), and provide downstream protection that meets the strict new European IEC-1000-4-2 System Level Two requirements.

According to Kalb, "We anticipated the need for increased levels of ESD protection in systems over two years ago and developed a structure to provide it. Since the introduction of the original PAC1284 about 18 months ago with industry standard 2KV ESD tolerance, we increased the capability first to 6KV and now to 8KV, plus added the IEC capability."

As a result, the Super 1284 provides ESD protection to the Super I/O chips manufactured by a number of semiconductor companies, as well as providing the termination and filtering capabilities required for the parallel printer port on PCs, workstations, set top boxes, and peripherals. Super I/O chips are getting more and more sensitive to ESD damage as manufacturers shrink the line widths of their chips. This device provides significant reliability enhancements to the system.

CMD's new product is built using a second generation of patented P/Active resistor-capacitor technology. According to Kalb, "The developments represented by this device reflect the long term technology development programs which California Micro Devices has implemented.

"This is one more step, and by no means the last, along the path toward providing ever-higher levels of passive component integration while lowering costs, reducing size, enhancing quality and reliability, and improving performance. I'm not aware of anyone else with anywhere near this capability today."

Headquartered in Milpitas, California Micro Devices (CMD) designs, manufactures and markets integrated thin film, silicon-based termination and filtering components and active electronic circuitry.

Built in ISO 9000-registered quality system environments, CMD's products target the requirements of computer, networking and communication-based system manufacturers for smaller, high-density devices that operate at high frequencies with superior performance and functionality. -0-

Note to Editors: P/Active is a trademark of California Micro Devices.

CONTACT: California Micro Devices Corp., Milpitas

Jeffrey Kalb, 408/934-3106

Nick Bacile, 408/934-3117

www.camd.com