GPS Chips extend battery life of navigation devices.

Sirf Technology, Inc Feb 23, 2006

Press Release Summary:

Utilizing 90 nm CMOS, 0.25 micron BiCMOS process technologies, SiRFstarIII-LT GSC3LT and GSC3LTi provide position, speed, heading, and time information. Housed in 7 x 7 x 1.2 mm, 153-pin BGA chip, Model GSC3LT includes self-sufficient power management, power-on reset circuitry, low noise amplifier control, and TCXO voltage supply and control. Model GSC3LTi is packaged in 6 x 6 x 1.2 mm, 120-pin BGA chip, and is suited for handheld systems that have centralized power management.

Original Press Release:

SiRF Slims SiRFstarIII GPS Architecture to Extend Battery Life of Consumer Navigation Devices

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 7 / -- SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRF), a leading provider of GPS-enabled silicon and premium software location platforms, today debuted the SiRFstarIII-LT, the most power-efficient and the smallest manifestation yet of its flagship SiRFstarIII architecture, for a wide range of GPS enabled consumer mobile devices.

"SiRFstarIII is becoming the architecture of choice for mobile consumer navigation devices, setting new performance standards and getting rave reviews for our customers' devices," according to Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF. "Utilizing innovative system, silicon and software technologies, we are now significantly raising the bar for power efficiency to enable longer battery life without compromising the flagship SiRFstarIII performance."

The power efficiencies, smaller reduction and cost savings come through a combination of enhanced signal processing core, advanced semiconductor process technologies and integration of key functions normally required to enable a complete GPS solution. The new family utilizes the 90 nanometer CMOS and 0.25 micron BiCMOS process technologies to achieve market leading power consumption, size and cost metrics while maintaining the legendary SiRFstarIII performance standard.

Based on this new family, SiRF is introducing two new products -- GSC3LT and GSC3LTi -- to address the needs of a wide range of mobile platforms. Both are complete navigation engines providing position, speed, heading and time information. Operating at one half the power consumption of existing SiRFstarIII family products, with tracking mode power of less than 50 miliwatts, these are an ideal choice for ever smaller, slimmer portable handheld devices that require excellent performance and long battery life.

The GSC3LT packs the performance punch of the award-winning SiRFstarIII architecture into a compact 7 X 7 X 1.2 mm sized, 153 pin ball grid arrays (BGA) chip -- 33 percent smaller than the current SiRFstarIII offerings. A range of power management and control functions normally required to externally support GPS chips have been integrated into the GSC3LT to lower the BOM and solution footprint -- functions including self-sufficient power management, power-on reset (POR) circuitry, low noise amplifier (LNA) control, and temperature controlled crystal oscillator (TCXO) voltage supply and control.

The GSC3LTi, meanwhile, is a smaller, less expensive version at 6 X 6 X 1.2 mm in size, and 120 pin BGA -- 50 percent smaller than existing SiRFstarIII-based products -- for handheld systems that have centralized power management and do not require the GPS sub-system power supply to be wholly independent and self-managed.

SiRFstarIII-LT family is supported by SiRF's standard autonomous software that is setting new benchmarks for performance in the portable navigation systems market. It also supports SiRFLoc, the patented Multimode AGPS software powering mobile phones optimized for location-enabled-services, as well as the recently-announced SiRFInstantFix(TM) technology (see press release entitled, SiRF Takes the Start-up Wait out of GPS Navigation, dated January 25, 2006). SiRFLoc improves GPS location capability in wireless system environments by providing various modes of wireless infrastructure assistance to improve weak signal reception, while SiRFInstantFix eliminates the initial task of obtaining GPS data from the satellites themselves, resulting in a time to first fix (TTFF) of less than 10 seconds, even in weak signal environments.

SiRFstarIII-LT AGPS performance is fully compliant with the industry-standard Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) TS25.171 and CDMA TIA916 requirements, with extremely fast assisted fix speeds that are significantly faster than required by the standard in many cases.

Availability
SiRFstarIII-LT family will be demonstrated to key customers at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February 2006. Production availability is expected in middle of year 2006.

About SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc.
SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. develops and markets semiconductor and software products that are designed to enable location-awareness utilizing GPS and other location technologies, enhanced by wireless connectivity capabilities such as Bluetooth, for high-volume mobile consumer devices and commercial applications. SiRF's technology has been integrated into mobile consumer devices such as automobile navigation systems, mobile phones, PDAs, GPS-based peripherals and handheld GPS navigation devices, and into commercial applications such as location servers, asset tracking devices and fleet management systems. SiRF markets and sells its products in four target platforms: automotive, consumer electronics, mobile computing, and wireless devices. Founded in 1995, SiRF is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has sales offices, design centers and research facilities around the world. The company trades on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the symbol SIRF. Additional information about SiRF and its location technology solutions can be found at www.sirf.com.

CONTACT: Rebecca Parr of SiRF Technology, Inc., +1-408-392-8422, or rparr@sirf.com