National Semiconductor Teams With Graychip To Market IC Solutions For Cellular Basestations

Fort Collins, CO - May 29, 1997 -- National Semiconductor Corporation® and Graychip DSP Chips and Systems today announced an agreement to jointly market ICs for cellular basestations. The product offering will include Graychip’s digital down conversion and up conversion integrated circuits for digital cellular telephony, PCS and other wireless systems. National devices will include several ICs from their Comlinear Product Group.

Initially, the two companies will offer a system that combines Graychip’s GC4014 quad digital receiver with four down converter channels with a trio of devices from National’s Comlinear Product Group, including a high-speed A/D; a digital variable gain amplifier (DVGA); and an ultra-wideband op amp. The two firms will also offer OEM customers an evaluation board containing the above parts for basestation design.

"By teaming with Graychip, National is well positioned to enable basestation designs that are small, low cost and able to handle multiple air interfaces," noted John Steininger, VP, Engineering at National’s Comlinear Product Group.

"Graychip’s high-performance function-specific DSPs ideally complement Comlinear’s high-speed A/Ds and op amps and high-performance digital variable gain amplifiers in basestation applications," he added.

"From a design standpoint, this unique combination of products will save our customers time and effort," observed Brad Evans, marketing director for Graychip. "Blending Comlinear’s high-performance mixed signal expertise with Graychip’s ability to develop custom DSP solutions promises even better solutions to come as we define new products for future wireless basestation applications."

Graychip, located in Palo Alto, California, specializes in the design of function-specific DSP chips featuring the speed, dynamic range and processing power required for today’s signal processing systems.

Graychip started business in 1989 to pioneer the use of CMOS technology to build leading-edge signal processing chip solutions. Graychip product information is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.graychip.com.

National Semiconductor Corporation, a Fortune 500 Company, produces system-on-a-chip silicon solutions for the information highway, based on its leadership in analog and mixed signal technologies. National is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and focuses on the communications, personal systems and consumer markets. In March 1997 National sold its Fairchild Semiconductor businesses and now has 12,300 employees worldwide with annual sales of approximately $2.0 billion.

Additional company and product information is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.national.com.

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