GCT Semiconductor demonstrates advanced piconet

GCT piconet demonstrates cost-effective CMOS Bluetooth solution using
proprietary direct conversion design techniques

Monte Carlo - June 5, 2001 - GCT Semiconductor, Inc. (GCT) today announced it will be demonstrating a Bluetooth piconet at the International Bluetooth Congress 2001 (Booth G1) using its Bluetooth GDM1100 Radio and GDM1101b chipset. The demo will highlight GCT's direct conversion CMOS Bluetooth solution, configured in a piconet with three laptops. Besides available samples, GCT also offers a comprehensive GCT Bluetooth Development Kit (GBDK) for prospective customers to speed the system design process.

In GCT's piconet demo, each laptop will be configured with a GCT Bluetooth sample kit in a host configuration via the Host Controller Interface (HCI). This configuration allows each laptop to run its "bouncing ball" software over the upper level Bluetooth software stack, which controls the GCT Bluetooth Baseband and Radio ICs with HCI commands via a serial link. One of the three laptops will operate as the master of the piconet while the other two laptops will operate as slaves-sharing information about the location of the "bouncing ball" while perfectly synchronizing the timing and location of the ball as it jumps from one screen to the next. Along with the "bouncing ball" demonstration, the demo will include LAN access point (LAP) and file transfer demonstration through the piconet configuration.

"This is the first time that we've shown a Bluetooth piconet demo with our GDM1100/1101b chipset, supporting a total solution from the radio and baseband ICs to the Bluetooth software stack," said Dr. K.H. Lee, CTO and founder of GCT. "We are excited about demonstrating our complete direct conversion CMOS technology, which lowers the cost basis for Bluetooth implementations, as well as other GCT RF solutions for 802.11a/b and WCDMA. GCT's CMOS direct conversion technology will deliver cost-effective multi-mode RF solutions for various emerging wireless standards."

With the continued emergence of a wireless, multi-media market, GCT's mature DSP core and multi-media technology will enable future RF solutions for cost-effective SoC (system-on-chip) multi-media applications. Its GDM1100 Bluetooth Radio IC is a direct conversion CMOS transceiver with a GFSK modem designed to work with the GDM1101b Bluetooth Baseband IC-a CMOS Bluetooth baseband IC running the necessary Bluetooth software to support multiple connections for a Bluetooth piconet.

"Bluetooth Congress 2001 is an ideal platform for us to demonstrate the technological milestones GCT has reached to develop the high-performance, cost-effective chips needed to make true wireless networking a reality," said K.S. Lee, GCT's president and CEO. "We are proud not only to demonstrate to visitors the success of our point-to-multi-point Bluetooth communication using GCT's Bluetooth chipset solutions, but also to be the main sponsor of the 'Chill-Out Zone,' a hospitality suite for conference attendees. We hope our visitors will come away not only a little more relaxed, but also with a better understanding about GCT and its next-generation wireless technology."

The design and manufacturing advances developed at GCT allow the company to demonstrate direct conversion RF on standard CMOS-paving the way for future inexpensive new transmitter/receiver chipsets for WCDMA and highly integrated CMOS PLL circuits with on-chip VCO for CDMA and GSM wireless standards.

GCT will continue to demonstrate the unique breadth of its technology at the Symposium on VLSI circuits (SOVC) in Kyoto, Japan this coming June. GCT will be presenting several papers at the symposium detailing its RF chipsets technologies-further evidence that its CMOS direct conversion RF technology has been widely admitted by academic society.

About GCT Semiconductor, Inc.

GCT Semiconductor is a leading fabless semiconductor company that produces innovative integrated circuit solutions for the wireless communications industry. With its proven radio frequency (RF) CMOS and system-on-a-chip (SOC) expertise, GCT provides state-of-the-art single-chip CMOS RF transceivers, mobile digital TV receivers and Mobile WiMAX solutions serving 3G and 4G mobile system manufacturers by reducing BOM cost, lowering power consumption and minimizing total solution size. For more information, please visit www.gctsemi.com.