FMI is emphasizing products for strategic, high-growth industries such as multimedia, graphics and wireless.



FMI's semiconductor products are used in many high-growth industries, in mainstream applications as well as in specialized markets. In addition to supporting the traditional semiconductor markets, the company is emphasizing new, strategically important areas in the PC, multimedia and wireless applications. Some highlights:

Graphics Products

In a demonstration of Fujitsu's commitment to the rapidly evolving graphics market, FMI has established a local organization to develop and market a comprehensive family of graphics products. This local organization works closely together with Japan to provide the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art products for applications that increasingly integrate graphics, audio and video.

FMI is presently focusing on the PC-based 3D graphics-accelerator industry, which is growing at an explosive rate. FMI's family of PC graphics cards spans the full range of high-performance products from Computer Aided Design (CAD), and visual-simulation applications to the new generation of home-entertainment products.

Specifically, Fujitsu was one the first companies to introduce a high-performance graphics accelerator for a PC. FMI's Sapphire 3D graphics accelerator cards bring high-level graphics capabilities such as lighting, shading and perspective-corrected texturing to the personal computer. New products that will be available in 1995 and early in 1996 will offer enhanced price/performance ratios, helping expand the market to new industries such as location-based entertainment, including virtual reality experiences.

In 1995, Fujitsu also introduced a comprehensive 3D graphics chip set especially designed for high-performance 3D applications. The 862xx series is one of the few chip sets that performs the required up-front 3D calculations, reducing the processor load for faster operation and more realistic images.

Flat-Panel Displays


Fujitsu was the first supplier to deliver multiple full-color flat-panel-display technologies for diverse markets. Fujitsu's product line includes color plasma-display panels (PDPs); color thin-film-transistor (TFT), liquid-crystal-display (LCD); and front LCD projection systems. These technologies are used in a wide range of applications, including the PC, medical, industrial and financial markets.

FMI was the first to announce the commercial availability of a 21-inch, full-color PDP. This is the largest currently in volume production. Fujitsu also introduced a 42 inch panel in 1995, a predecessor to the High Definition Television (HDTV) screens expected before the end of the decade.

The New York Stock Exchange is currently using more than 1,000 of the 21-inch panels as overhead displays for the trading floor. The panels, which are an integral part of the Stock Exchange's introduction of advanced technology, effectively double the number of overhead displays on the trading floor. Because the panels have a wide viewing angle of more than 140 degrees, information can be viewed off-axis without distortion.

Additionally, FMI offers six l0.4-inch color LCD modules that address portable and non-portable applications in markets such as personal-computers, medical instrumentation and industrial-control. Two models, the FLC26VGC3W and FLC26VGC8W, have a wide viewing angle of 120 degrees. Fujitsu uses a proprietary double-domain technology to attain this expanded angle of visibility. The company's new high-brightness LCD projector system delivers bright, VGA-class images in a wide range of projected screen sizes. The product, which is designed for multimedia business presentations, allows the user to run either video or still presentations from a PC or Apple Macintosh computer.

In the future, Fujitsu plans to develop panels with larger screen sizes, higher information content, better resolution and lower power consumption to address an even broader range of applications.

Wireless Communications

FMI's telecommunications IC product offering includes a wide range of advanced Radio Frequency (RF) devices. These products are used in diverse wireless applications such as cellular and cordless telephones, wireless LAN/WAN systems and wireless PBX systems.

For example, Fujitsu is a leading worldwide supplier of SAW filters, a critical component of cellular telephones. About half the cellular phones currently in use worldwide utilize Fujitsu's technology.

FMI's phase-locked-loop (PLL) frequency synthesizers offer a wide range of operation frequencies to meet diverse design requirements. The company's low-power PLLs, the MB15A01 and MB15A02, feature smaller packages and reduced power consumption, meeting the needs of portable, cellular and related wireless system designs.

Fujitsu is also one of the few companies to offer SuperPLLs, which combine multiple functions into a complete integrated solution. The company's new high-speed Super PLLs, the MB1516A family, meet the industry's strictest performance standards, making them appropriate for virtually any digital cellular application.

Other products include prescalers; multi-function, super-analog devices; and power-management devices. The most recent power-management switch, the MB3802, eliminates power consumption when portable computers are in stand-by mode, extending battery life.

FMI is also one of the few semiconductor companies to offer an RF integration road map through the use of Fujitsu's LSI RF Mixed Signal Technology. This technology helps customers go from discrete solutions to an integrated, single-chip solution, thereby reducing the size, cost and weight of products while shortening the development time.

FMI develops, manufactures and markets one of the industry's most comprehensive lines of advanced memory and logic products.

Some highlights:

Networking Products

FMI's networking product line includes ATM chips, networking chips, SCSI integrated circuits and plug-and-play controllers.

An early entrant into the ATM market, Fujitsu has a long-term commitment to this technology. The company has extensive knowledge of ATM design and enjoys relationships with a broad cross-section of equipment builders worldwide. FMI provides the most comprehensive ATM solutions available today. For example, the company's new ITC-25 and ITC-155 terminal controllers are optimized for network interface card (NIC) applications. This will help give ATM a price/performance advantage as this technology expands from the wide area network to the desktop. UB Networks, a leading networking vendor, is already incorporating Fujitsu's ATM ICs into its broadband products.

FMI develops and produces a number of devices for Ethernet local area networks, including single-chip controllers and coaxial and twisted pair transceivers. The latest addition to the product line, the MB8696, is a single-chip device targeted at the rapidly growing market for PC Cards.

Leading equipment vendors use FMI's Ethernet products in a wide variety of products. For example, Shiva Corporation uses FMI's MB86950 EtherStar and MB86960 NICE controllers in several models of its remote-access LAN servers. Xircom, Inc. uses FMI's MB86964 small-footprint controller in its second-generation CreditCard Ethernet+Modem II Adapter for portable PCs. Digital Products also uses the single-chip MB86964 in several models of its network print servers. And Allied Telesyn Corporation (previously Allied Telesis) uses FMI's single-chip controllers in a number of its Ethernet network interface cards.

FMI has also maintained a leading-edge position in general-purpose, high-performance SCSI integrated circuits since entering that market in 1986. The company's SCSI ICs are used in a variety of applications including large disk-array controllers, workstations, servers and high-end PCs. FMI is presently developing PCI-based SCSI-3 products that are expected to be introduced early in 1996.

FMI's single-chip plug-and-play controller, the MB86701A, provides comprehensive autoconfiguration capabilities for PC Cards, simplifying upgrades and reducing costs. Because the product meets Microsoft® Corporation's "PC95" requirements, OEMs using the device can certify their cards to carry the Windows® 95 logo, an important step in assuring Windows compatibility.

Memory Products

Over the past year, Fujitsu has taken a leadership role in driving the memory industry's conversion from traditional asynchronous DRAMs and Synchronous RAMs (SRAMs) architectures to the new high-performance synchronous architectures.

FMI was the first company to announce the 64-Megabit SDRAM. The company is developing a production version of that 64-Megabit SDRAM and is currently shipping production volumes of the 4-, 8- and 16-Megabit devices. FMI is also prototyping 256-Megabit memory devices. These next-generation architectures, which provide higher performance at lower cost, will support the stringent memory requirements of today's intensive computing and multimedia applications.

FMI's revenues from its memory products increased more than 75 percent in fiscal year 1994, due to a strong market, improved relationships with major customers and enhanced production output. FMI anticipates another year of strong growth as it makes significant progress in setting new industry standards and supporting the conversion to leading-edge high-performance memory products. To further increase its support for its customers in the Americas, FMI announced a $1 billion expansion to its wafer fabrication facility in Gresham, Oregon, to produce 16 and 64 Megabit DRAMs and SDRMAs.

PC Cards

A founding member of the PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) standards organization, Fujitsu was one of the leaders in defining the original PCMCIA specifications and is now a leading worldwide manufacturer of Memory PC Cards.

The company has one of the industry's broadest lines of PC Cards. In addition to its memory cards, FMI markets a variety of LAN, multimedia, and communications cards, including PC Ethernet, sound, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), fax-modem SCSI and multi-function cards.

In its work on PC Cards, Fujitsu is leveraging its core competency in mobile computing. FMI will continue to expand its product line and plans to broaden its distribution to include retail channels in addition to its traditional OEM market.


ASICs

Fujitsu is one of the largest producers of ASICs in the world. The company's ASIC product line ranges from commodity gate arrays to some of the industry's most advanced embedded arrays. FMI is focusing on leading-edge chips with high gate counts to handle today's most complex applications. For example, the .5 micron CMOS ASIC, the 3.3V CG51/CE51, features up to 750,000 useable gates in a channelless, "sea-of-gates." The new .65 micron product, the 5V CG46/CE46 family, was developed specifically for workstations, data-communications systems and other mainstream designs that require high levels of performance and speed, together with reduced power consumption. FMI is presently shipping samples of its .35 micron ASIC family as well.

Few companies can match Fujitsu's submicron manufacturing capability, which enables customer to fit more functions onto a single ASIC chip. The addition of BGA (Ball Grid Array) packages, together with the .5 and .65 micron CMOS ASIC products, provide optimal, cost-effective, high-performance solutions to customers' design requirements.

Processors

The SPARC® microprocessor is targeted at applications that require highly efficient computing power. FMI has continued to improve the performance of the SPARC product line. The company is presently shipping production volumes of the microSPARC II. This product, which operates at 110 Megahertz, is used in Sun Microsystems' SPARCstation TM 5 family of workstations, the most popular workstation in the industry. FMI is now independently developing the next-generation SPARC microprocessor for use in computer workstations.

Embedded Controls

Over the past year, FMI brought several new SPARClite embedded-control products to market, demonstrating again its commitment to expand computing power and performance.

FMI's 930 series embedded-control family provides advanced RISC technology over the full range of performance and costs. These embedded microprocessors are used in a wide variety of applications, from traditional areas such as office automation to newer applications such as communications and imaging. FMI is presently shipping production volumes of its 933H 32-bit embedded processor that offers high performance, lower power consumption and competitive pricing. FMI's new 934 high-performance embedded controller is the first such product to have a direct interface to SDRAMs, allowing high bandwidth transactions between the processors and the system. The 936 highly integrated processor is presently shipping to early customers.

Fujitsu's embedded-control technology has gained wide market acceptance, is supported by the leading software-tool vendor and is incorporated into many leading products. For example, the 930 series is used in EPSON's ActionLaser printers and in the OmniSwitch network switch from Xylan Corporation.

Interconnect Technologies

FMI is one of the few semiconductor companies to offer value-added packaging solutions. FMI's interconnect expertise enables customers to combine products in unique ways to produce new levels of integration and performance. By making a substantial investment in this technology, Fujitsu helps designers reduce size, while improving performance.

The product offering includes custom modules such as hybrid ICs and multichip modules (MCMs). Fujitsu, which offers a wide range of MCM technology, recently announced a new MCM technology for high-performance CMOS parallel computers. The new technology features the highest pattern density in the world on an MCM substrate.

FMI also markets board-level products, such as printed-wiring assemblies and printed-circuit boards. In 1995, Convex Computer Corporation gave FMI a special award for its printed-wiring boards and printed-wiring assembly products. Convex uses the products in its Exemplar SPP1000 and SPP1200 systems.

Marketing and Future Plans

FMI markets its semiconductor products primarily through selected independent manufacturer's representatives and authorized distributors to OEM computer and telecommunications manufacturers worldwide. System integrators VARs and distributors market the company's graphics products and PC Cards to retail channels.

To maintain and expand its leadership position, FMI is focusing increased amounts of its resources on high-end semiconductors such as ASICs and ASSPs. The company is also increasing its presence in high-growth areas such as PC Cards, telecommunications, networking, graphics and multimedia through additional products based on ATM and other advanced technologies.

By far the major segment of the company's business, FMI's semiconductor products represent the key element in the company's success today and in the future.




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