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New Frontier Silicon module achieves 100-hour battery life for portable DAB digital radios

London and Hong Kong, 13 October 2005: Frontier Silicon - the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for mobile digital television (MDTV) and DAB digital radio products - has launched the latest in its range of DAB modules. The new Venice 4.0 FS2024 DAB/FM/RDS module, to be shown for the first time at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair starting today, consumes only one-quarter of the battery power used by competing modules and enables battery powered radios to operate in DAB mode for over 100 hours using standard alkaline batteries. The company expects the performance and cost of its new Venice 4.0 module to help extend its leadership position in the DAB market, which currently stands in excess of 70 percent.

The module is electrically and mechanically compatible with previous versions of Frontier Silicon's Venice series, allowing manufacturers to upgrade their existing designs and offer new DAB radios with significantly improved battery life. By using the latest Apollo silicon tuner from Frontier Silicon, a high level of integration has been achieved on the RF front end of Venice 4.0. Apollo combines Band III DAB capability with Band II for FM/RDS while using minimal external components. To maximise battery life Apollo utilises innovative near zero IF techniques making it the most energy efficient DAB/FM tuner on the market.

The baseband of Venice 4.0 also benefits from high integration through the use of Frontier Silicon's market-leading Chorus multimedia processor, allowing the module to implement all of the processing functions required in an advanced DAB/FM/RDS radio, including state of the art features such as Electronic Program Guide, without the need for an external microprocessor. To further reduce system cost Venice 4.0 offers the options of a software FM/RDS function, eliminating the need for a separate FM tuner chip.

Venice 4.0 is a turnkey solution that can be used as a standalone DAB/FM receiver, or it can be integrated with other audio components using external microprocessor control via industry standard communications protocols. As a standalone receiver, the only additional components required to create a fully-featured digital and FM/RDS radio are a power source, antenna, LCD and keypad. The module has a combined Band III and Band II input connector for DAB and FM so that only a single antenna input to the module is needed. The Venice 4.0 DAB/FM/RDS module measures 100mm x 40mm x 8mm high and will be available in mass production volumes by the end of 2005.

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About Frontier Silicon

Frontier Silicon is an award-winning company at the forefront of the digital multimedia revolution with a range of semiconductor solutions for mobile digital television, digital TV and digital radio. The company develops and delivers both the broadcast signal receiver modules and digital processing circuits as individual chips and complete system modules to leading consumer electronics and mobile phone brands. As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon's core products include complete DAB modules, T-DMB (terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting) solutions, and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices and receiver chips.

Key customers for the company's products include consumer electronic, automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers such as Bang & Olufsen, Cambridge Audio, Goodmans, Grundig, Hitachi, Ministry of Sound, Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and TEAC. Frontier Silicon has won a number of awards from the Fabless Semiconductor Association (2004), PricewaterhouseCoopers (2004), the World Economic Forum (2005), and the Tornado T100 award.

Frontier Silicon uses Meta^TM and UCC^TM intellectual property from Imagination Technologies.