-- Lower costs: Discera sees a path of 15 percent cost reduction every year while quartz crystal companies are running at a 10-20 percent margin and unable to offer significant cost reductions to their customers. -- Shorter lead time: Provides a unique way to define the oscillator frequency anywhere between 1MHz-125MHz with a resolution of 2ppm. Unlike most of the programmable oscillators which only provide a limited number of frequencies, Discera can provide almost any frequency. -- Better reliability: CMOS MEMS oscillators can reach performance requirements and costs at least 100 times lower than quartz crystal oscillators in special applications for extreme environments. Testing shows Discera's resonators survived 30,000g of shock with no degradation in performance and can be even more robust with industry standard packaging techniques.Discera's CTO, Wan-Thai Hsu, was named an "Innovator of the Year" finalist for 2006, in the Third Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards (http://www.eetimes-ace.com), for his work in bringing MEMS-based oscillators to reality. Discera recently demonstrated its technology as a plug-and-play direct replacement of quartz crystal in a camcorder device at the Electronica show. This was the first MEMS demonstration in a consumer device. Key target applications for MEMS-based timing devices are DVD players, gaming consoles, set-top boxes, camcorders, PDAs and cameras. Since the oscillator is the heartbeat of all electronic systems, the impact of the MEMS oscillator does not only affect the timing market but essentially all the systems. The complete resonator model together with the circuit block enables system designers to take advantage of the ultra reliable, low-cost oscillators for a very wide range of applications. For more information please contact Discera or visit www.discera.com. About Discera Discera is a fabless analog semiconductor company that offers tiny, high performance silicon resonators for the frequency and timing control markets. These resonators act as the heartbeat or pulse for a variety of devices from consumer products such as cameras and MP3 players to specialized equipment for the military. The company's PureSilicon™ resonator technology is a fundamental building block that offers, according to Semico Research, "a better mousetrap" for creating fully integrated, low cost, small form factor wireline and wireless products, such as oscillators, filters, and RF components. Unlike crystal based oscillators, Discera's PureSilicon™ based CMOS oscillators can be integrated into other CMOS based circuits. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Discera is a privately held company with investments from Ardesta, Partech, 3i, and Qualcomm Ventures. More information is available at www.discera.com.
Contact Information: Media Contacts for Discera: Venkat Bahl Discera, Inc. 408-432-8600 x228 venkat@discera.com Emilie Harris Lois Paul & Partners 512-638-5321 emilie_harris@lpp.com