Oki Semiconductor Partners with Ashling Microsystems to Provide a Low-Cost Developer Kit for Oki's Advantage Microcontrollers

OKI PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

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Sunnyvale, CA - February 16, 2004: Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, and Ashling Microsystems have announced the availability of a complete, low-cost development solution for Oki's Advantage MicrocontrollerT family of general-purpose MCU products. Ashling's DEVK-ML675K Kit, in combination with Oki's 674001 and 675001 series of microcontrollers, is aimed at designers seeking 32-bit CPU performance at a price that is highly competitive with 8-bit and 16-bit products.

The Ashling DEVK-ML675K Development Kit, which is designed for Oki's Advantage Microcontroller family, is a comprehensive tools package for designing, compiling, debugging and integrating systems based on Oki's family of ARM7-based general purpose microcontroller products. The kit provides designers with functionality tailored to the specific requirements of Oki's Advantage Microcontroller products at a price that is extremely attractive to designers who are used to low-cost tool solutions. The Ashling DEVK-ML675K Development Kit helps to reduce the barrier of entry to development tools for a large segment of the market, and will enable many companies to easily make the switch from proprietary designs to ARM-based solutions.

"This announcement between Oki Semiconductor and Ashling Microsystems provides Oki's customers with another total solution for software development for our Advantage Microcontroller products, and increases the number of ready-to-use tool choices for our customers. It further strengthens Oki's strategy for enabling our customers to make the transition from proprietary 8-bit and 16-bit CPU designs to MCUs based on the industry's leading 32-bit RISC architecture," said Mitchell Le, senior product marketing manager, Oki Semiconductor. "Our affordable general purpose Advantage Microcontrollers, combined with the low-cost Ashling DEVK-ML675K Kit, provides designers with a pre-validated solution that is ready to use right out of the box. Moreover, this developer kit is easy to use and offers an extremely compelling solution to any designer seeking an optimal combination of performance and price."

The Ashling development solution for Oki's Advantage Microcontrollers provides a complete solution for creating applications for the ARM architecture, and consists of an Integrated Development Environment, project build manager, GNU compiler, Ashling PathFinder Source Debugger, Ashling Opella JTAG Emulator, and a USB JTAG cable ready to be connected to Oki's CPU Board. An easy-to-use flash programming package, which is supplied with the Kit, programs the ML67Q4001 and ML67Q5001 on-chip flash memory and the flash devices on Oki's CPU boards.

Introducing the new Kit, Michael Healy, CEO of Ashling Microsystems, Inc., in Sunnyvale said, "Ashling and Oki have been partners for many years and the introduction of this new Kit builds on our close technical and business relationships with Oki. This new development means that users of Oki's powerful Advantage Microcontrollers ARM7-based embedded controller architecture can utilize the Ashling toolset to get their products to market quickly and reliably. The new Ashling Kit contains everything that the designer needs for successful embedded development. We believe that the feature set and the price of the Kit are what the market needs, and most importantly we're offering designers Ashling's uniquely qualified technical support and advice services as they incorporate Oki's ARM-core microcontrollers in their products."

Oki's 674001 and 675001 series of Advantage Microcontroller products provide better alternatives to proprietary architectures in great part because of the higher performance, wider industry support, more ready-to-use software applications and a wide range of tools from third-party vendors.

Availability
The Ashling DEVK-ML675K Kit is available for Oki Semiconductor's 674001 and 675001 series of Advantage Microcontroller products through Ashling (http://www.ashling.com/support/ML675K) and Jaco Electronics (http://www.jacoelectronics.com) and is listed at $1,995.

About Ashling Microsystems
Ashling Microsystems (founded in 1982) is a privately held international Embedded Software Development Tools company. Ashling designs and manufactures JTAG/BDM Emulators, In-Circuit Emulators, Source Debuggers, Software Quality Assurance tools, Integrated Development Environments, Development Boards and Smart Card development tools. Ashling's semiconductor partners include ARC International, Atmel, MIPS Technologies, Philips Semiconductors, Freescale (Motorola) Semiconductors, NEC, Oki, ARM and Infineon Technologies. The company's North America Sales and Support Center is in Sunnyvale, California, with sales subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and France and distributors throughout the world. Ashling is certified to ISO 9001:2000.

More information on Ashling is available at http://www.ashling.com/.

About Oki Semiconductor
Building on Oki's century-long commitment to communications technologies and markets, Oki Semiconductor designs and markets a broad line of advanced integrated circuits for telecommunications, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller, display drivers, and memory devices, offered in a variety of creative packages. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oki Semiconductor is a division of Oki America Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000 and QS9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available through its web site at: http://www.okisemi.com/us.

Oki Semiconductor.the Right Partner for a Digital WorldTM

Oki Contact:
Alain Dangerfield
Oki Semiconductor
(408) 737-6347

Ashling Contact:
Ashling Microsystems, Inc.
Sunnyvale, CA
(408) 732 6490

Advantage Microcontroller is a trademark of Oki Semiconductor and Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

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