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

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 21:00 CST

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. , 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 http://www.sirf.com/.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the competition position of SiRFstarIII, the ability to extend battery life without compromising performance, the ability of SiRFstarIII-LT to achieve market leading size, power and cost metrics, the versatility and benefits of GSC3LT and GSC3LTi, and the performance of the SiRFstarIII-LT family in the portable navigation systems market are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "to,""being,""possible,""may,""addresses,""designed to,""provide,""believe," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and should not be considered as an indication of future performance. SiRF's actual results could differ materially from those discussed in these forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties, including, among others, demand and market acceptance for our products and those of our customers, the market for GPS-based location awareness capabilities, risks associated with the semiconductor industry and other risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2005 and from time to time in SiRF's SEC reports. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.

FCMN Contact: rparr@sirf.com

SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc.

CONTACT: Lori Evans of Evans Public Relations, +1-650-200-5891, orlori@evanspublicrelations.com, for SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc.; or RebeccaParr of SiRF Technology, Inc., +1-408-392-8422, or rparr@sirf.com

Web site: http://www.sirf.com/

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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