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Complete T-DMB system solution unveiled by Frontier Silicon and C & S Technology

Seoul, South Korea, 19 October 2005: Frontier Silicon - the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for mobile digital television (MDTV) and DAB digital radio products - and C&S Technology Inc., South Korea's leading supplier of semiconductors for multimedia broadcasting and communications, will today reveal a complete, system-level reference design for Korean terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB). The solution is initially developed for automotive applications in which consumers can receive digital broadcast services while on the move, but will also provide mobile handset manufacturers with a working design upon which they can rapidly develop and launch mobile handsets both for the Korean market as well as for other regions intending to launch T-DMB broadcast services.

KN Kim, president of Frontier Silicon Korea said, "The demonstration of this solution shows that our chip set can interface with leading video applications processors to implement a full T-DMB solution, for both automotive environments and mobile handsets. Our work with the video processor from C&S Technology is just the first step in developing a choice of solutions for our customers to build their products on." Mr SeungMo Seo, CEO of C&S Technology Inc., added, "We welcome the interface with Kino and Apollo from Frontier Silicon which make up a proven T-DMB implementation. We are confident that the combination of this with our Neptune chip will result in another successful T-DMB solution."

The solution to be shown at the opening of Frontier Silicon's office in Seoul is based on the company's Apollo silicon RF tuner and Kino T-DMB baseband processor, interfaced with the Neptune multimedia processor from C & S Technology. Neptune is a single-chip multimedia processor designed to handle video and audio decoding for T-DMB and S-DMB (Korean satellite digital multimedia broadcasting), and it also features a hard-wired H.264 video decoder.

Apollo is the smallest RF tuner for T-DMB currently available, and features power consumption that is almost one-quarter of competing receivers. The small size and low power consumption make it ideal for designing into mobile handsets intended for T-DMB (digital video broadcasting) products. The Kino chip provides a dedicated hardware baseband solution for T-DMB which is fully programmable using software. This provides mobile TV handset manufacturers with maximum flexibility for configuring their products and the options that they can provide to their customers.

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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 and its products have also enabled award-winning consumer products. The company's awards include the Fabless Semiconductor Association's start-up to watch award, PricewaterhouseCoopers hottest technology company of 2004 award, the World Economic Forum's technology pioneers to watch 2005, and the Tornado T100 award for one of the best-performing and innovative high-tech private companies.

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