| Press Release *****For immediate use September 9th, 2002 NEC Showcases Latest Serial ATA Macro at Intel Developer Forum-Industry's Leading High-Speed Prototype Silicon in Action for Hard Disk Drives and Other Storage Subsystems-INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, SAN JOSE, Calif., September 9, 2002-NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l) (TSE: 6701) and NEC Electronics Inc., NEC's wholly owned subsidiary in the United States, today announced development of a new Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) macro prototype that enables large-scale integrated (LSI) devices to transfer high-speed data up to eight channels simultaneously. The working prototype silicon operates up to 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) while at the same time is fully compliant with the current 1.5 Gbps Serial ATA specification. The intellectual property (IP) prototype core has been designed to be flexible enough to work with future, more advanced Serial ATA specifications as well as enabling easy leverage to a serial attached SCSI (small computer system interface), also known as SAS, configuration. SAS is a foremost connectivity technology for network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs). NEC is demonstrating its high-speed Serial ATA prototype macro with the NEC host controller and NEC physical layer (PHY) chip in its booth #424 at Intel Developer Forum 2002 in San Jose, California, September 9 through September 12. "Intel is pleased to see that NEC is participating in the advancement of Serial ATA II technology with this prototype Serial ATA IP core," said Jason Ziller, Intel technology initiatives manager and Serial ATA Working Group chairman. "It is important to the growth of the disk drive markets to have advanced technology align with the expected release of the second-generation specification in the second half of 2003." An IP core that implements a physical layer, link layer and transport layer storage interface, the NEC Serial ATA macro provides very high-speed serial data transport, making it ideal for use with hard disk drives and digital videodisks in PC applications and multi-channel redundant array of independent disk (RAID) systems in storage applications. Serial ATA is the specification for a high-speed hardware interface that connects hard disk drives and digital videodisks to storage systems such as desktop computers, mobile computing equipment, small-size servers and internal networking storage devices. Systems implementing Serial ATA technology are known to have lower costs and better performance, connectivity and reliability. NEC's implementation of a Serial ATA macro prototype includes spread-spectrum clocking on both the transmitter and receiver sides to minimize system disturbance from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and to offer optimal features for the configuration of external devices. The new second-generation design is based on NEC's latest mass-production process, the UX4, a 0.15-micron CMOS technology node, suitable for smaller LSI systems with lower voltages. NEC is committed to becoming a global provider of high-speed interface technologies to the PC, server, storage and communication markets. Implementing next-generation interface technologies such as Serial ATA is one of NEC's highest priorities, along with creating process technologies that demonstrate the company's leadership in the high-end system LSI arena. "As a member of the Serial ATA-II Working Group since April 2002, NEC has made major contributions toward development of the technical specifications," said Kyuichi Hareyama, general manager, Network Core Development Division, System LSI Operations Unit, NEC Electron Devices, NEC Corporation. "Currently NEC is developing a next-generation technology that we expect will comply fully with the Serial ATA-II specification during second half of 2003." About NEC Corporation About NEC Electronics Inc. ***
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