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Silicon Laboratories Development Kit Delivers on the Promise of Digital Power; Intuitive Tools Simplify Design, Reduce Digital Control Learning Curve

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

Silicon Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq:SLAB) today announced the availability of a comprehensive development kit for the Si825x family of digital power controllers. The new development kit, the Si8250DK, is a complete hardware and firmware development system that requires users to write little or no software to implement digital power supplies. The tool dramatically shortens the digital power learning curve, enabling analog engineers to rapidly implement digitally-controlled power systems.

The Si8250DK supports Silicon Laboratories' Si825x family of digital power supply controllers, which offer the fast response of an ASIC solution and the flexibility of a Flash-based processor. The unique Si825x architecture delivers both digital power control and management functions while consuming one-tenth the space and drawing less than 15 percent of the supply current of typical digital signal processor (DSP) solutions.

"The industry-leading integration, performance and flexibility of the Si825x make it ideal for high-performance power supplies in communications systems, computers, servers and industrial and medical equipment," said Don Alfano, director of power products for Silicon Laboratories. "The Si8250DK development kit was created to enable analog power designers using the Si825x digital controllers to quickly become proficient in digital power supply design."

The Si8250DK includes a source-level, real-time kernel that supplies key system software functions including power supply initialization, soft-start, fault detection and recovery, PMBus(TM) management and shutdown. The kit includes powerful GUI-based Application Builder software that enables the user to design and verify system switch timing, loop compensation and configuration without writing application software. Also included is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) consisting of an editor, macro assembler, demo C compiler and a special on-line debugger that allows the user to manually adjust system parameters (such as loop compensation) during power supply operation.

Pricing and Availability

The Si8250DK development kit includes everything needed to develop applications with the Si825x:

-- Si8250 target board featuring an isolated half-bridge current doubler rectifier

-- USB to SMBus(TM) bridge board

-- USB debug adapter and USB cable

-- Two 9 V, 1.5 A universal power supplies

-- Silicon Laboratories' IDE and product information CD-ROM that includes the Keil 8051 development tools (macro assembler, linker, evaluation C compiler), source code examples and register definition files, the Si825x kernel, waveform builder and compensator design tools, PMBus monitor software and documentation.

The Si8250DK is available now for $199 and can be purchased online. A video demonstration of the tool kit is also available. Please visit www.silabs.com/DigitalPowerTools.

Silicon Laboratories Inc.

Silicon Laboratories Inc. is a leading designer of high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for a broad range of applications. Silicon Laboratories' diverse portfolio of highly integrated, patented solutions is developed by a world-class engineering team with decades of cumulative expertise in cutting-edge mixed-signal design. The company has design, engineering, marketing, sales and applications offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information about Silicon Laboratories please visit www.silabs.com.

Cautionary Language

This press release may contain forward-looking statements based on Silicon Laboratories' current expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Silicon Laboratories believes that it is important to communicate the company's future expectations to investors. However, there may be events in the future that Silicon Laboratories is not able to accurately predict or control. For a discussion of these and other factors that could impact Silicon Laboratories' financial results and cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, please refer to Silicon Laboratories' recent filings with the SEC, particularly the Form 10-Q filed July 22, 2005.

Note to editors: Silicon Laboratories and the Silicon Laboratories logo are trademarks of Silicon Laboratories Inc. All other product names noted herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Source: Business Wire

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