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Frontier Silicon announces agreement with Acoustic Solutions

Mass Market £129 DAB Digital Radio Tuner Powered by Chorus Digital Audio Processor

Another design win for Frontier's DAB solution

London, UK - September 3, 2002 - Frontier Silicon, a multimedia semiconductor business whose core products include system-on-chip (SoC) devices for Digital TV and Digital Radio, today announced that Acoustic Solutions is using the Frontier Chorus™ FS1010 in its new SP-110 DAB digital radio tuner.

The Acoustic Solutions SP-110 goes on sale this month from leading retailers, including ARGOS and Richer Sounds, and costs just £129.99 inc VAT, making it the UK's lowest priced component DAB digital radio hi-fi tuner.

The SP-110 offers crystal clear reception with no hiss, crackles or interference; auto scan for local and national stations; digital control of station and program search; preset keys for instant program location; a favourite station memory facility, LCD display; a simple rotary control dial; and access to many more stations than analogue radio, including exclusive DAB stations.

Acoustic Solutions is best known in the UK for its quality speakers and has audio product selling in most high street retailers. It is also the company responsible for consumer led DJ products under its Homemix brand which to date have generated over £7.5 million of retail sales. The SP-110 is part of a new range of hi-fi separates, which also includes mass-market CD and amplifier components.

The Frontier Chorus™ FS1010 is a single-chip DAB/Audio processor based on a licensed META™ processor design from Imagination Technologies. It is a cost-effective, low power multimedia DSP and general purpose processor, which integrates all the necessary functionality and interfaces for a range of DAB-enabled consumer systems on the same chip.

Says Anthony Sethill, CEO, Frontier Silicon: "The advanced capabilities of our Chorus processor, its low cost, and its ability to be integrated into mass market audio products quickly and efficiently, are enabling our customers to produce highly competitive and innovative DAB audio products. This, together with the plethora of new content broadcast by the BBC and commercial radio channels, will drive the take up of DAB technology in the UK this year and its spread across Europe over the next two years. We are very pleased to be partnering with Acoustic Solutions in helping to pioneer the mass market take up of DAB technology."

Simon Parslow, Director of Sales and Marketing and new product development for Acoustic Solutions says: "We started to discuss the Chorus device with Frontier in May this year and started production of our tuner product 12 weeks later - both the chip and support service offered by Frontier were excellent."

About Chorus FS1010

The Frontier Silicon Chorus FS1010 processor is a super-integrated low-power system on a chip (SoC), which delivers a highly flexible and efficient solution for multimedia and communication applications such as digital radios, portable music players, and home/in-car audio and multimedia. The FS1010 uses the revolutionary multi-threaded META processor core from Imagination Technologies. It integrates on-chip RAM & caches, DAB coprocessors, and a comprehensive range of peripherals. In addition it has extensive applications software and development support.

The multi-threaded architecture of the META core allows the FS1010 to execute multiple real-time multimedia and communication-based DSP tasks, as well as general-purpose activities such as the user interfacing and data storage/filing needed in multimedia applications.

On-chip coprocessors coupled with real-time-aware hardware thread-scheduling enable the FS1010 to run multiple applications including the concurrent processing of digital radio and other multimedia tasks. For example, an FS1010 running at 150 MHz needs less than 30% of its processing capacity to execute the demodulation, decoding, protocol stack and user interface tasks for a digital radio.

The processing power and programmability of the FS1010 enables it to be used for demanding application-specific functions such as surround sound decoding, audio encoding or advanced data service decoding. It also supports secure music and other key-based applications, using RSA to transfer cryptographic keys or other encrypted data held in external memory to internal memory whilst ensuring that the data can only be read by the intended application code.

FS1010 uses dynamic and static power management techniques including fully-static design, clock-gating and inactive period state minimisation for low power usage without compromising performance. The processor clock is generated by a PLL that can be reprogrammed dynamically, allowing power consumption to be minimized for each application.

-ENDS-

About Acoustic Solutions

Acoustic Solutions Limited is now in its 5th year of trading. The ex Jamo MD, David Stobart who had spent his life around loudspeakers when previously at both Goodmans and Wharfedale, founded this young dynamic company and has been successful at supplying the major blue chip retailers in the UK, such as Argos, Littlewoods, Dixons, Currys, Richer Sounds amongst others.

The company has thrived on supplying 'affordable quality' which is testament to the fact that its AV120 column speakers are usually found in the top 5 selling loudspeakers in the UK.

The move into electronics two years ago has paid dividends with Acoustic Solutions being able to identify niches and fill them quickly with product brought to market in the shortest timescale.

The growth of the company has been 100% year on year, and year 5 looks to set another milestone in the company's history. The future for Acoustic Solutions is very positive, and with partners such as Frontier Silicon, will see it providing hi-tech products long term into the future.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc is an international IP licensing company that develops, licenses and supplies market-leading 2D/3D graphics, digital video, digital signal processing, audio and speech technologies for the consumer entertainment and PC markets. It supplies both licensable IP (Intellectual Property) and advanced development tools to leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies worldwide. Imagination Technologies Group plc has its corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE:IMG). See: www.imgtec.com.

About Frontier Silicon

Operating at the frontiers of the digital revolution Frontier Silicon is a fabless semiconductor business whose core products include system-on-chip (SoC) devices for Digital TV, Digital Radio and other emerging consumer multimedia products. Frontier's key customers include consumer electronic, automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers.