Solomon Systech Limited

SOLOMON SYSTECH LIMITED SIGNS LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH
MOTIF CORPORATION TO APPLY
ACTIVE ADDRESSING TECHNOLOGY IN
SOLOMON SYSTECH'S LCD DRIVER & CONTROLLER CHIPS

A License Covering the 1st Solomon MLA Chipset for PDA Applications

Hong Kong, China - Feb 26, 2001 - Solomon Systech Limited today announced a license agreement signed with Motif Corporation to apply Active Addressing technology in their LCD driver & controller chips, effective from 12 February 2001. The license covers the company's 1st MLA (multi-line addressing) chipset, which includes SSD1870 160 Column Driver, SSD1881 160 Row Driver and SSD1882 240 Row Driver. With the implementation of MLA driving scheme in the driver chips, the LCD module system will have high picture quality, fast response speed and low power consumption. Thus, the MLA chipset are excellent for high-end PDAs, 3G mobile phones and palm-size PCs where high quality LCD display and long battery life are desired.

"Getting this license agreement signed with Motif is another critical milestone achieved for our company," said Mr. Humphrey Leung, President of Solomon Systech Limited. "Solomon Systech Limited has always been committed to the advanced technology. With all the new products designed and developed in-house, we became one of the major LCD driver IC suppliers in the worldwide cellular phone market in 2000. This year, we are ready to extend our support to the higher resolution, handheld display market."

The detailed discussion of this agreement took place in a meeting held in Hong Kong last October. "It was a memorable meeting where I met Dr. Terry Scheffer, Chief Scientist of In Focus Systems, Inc.," said Mr. W.M. Lo, Business Operations Director of Solomon Systech Limited. "We all listened to Dr. Terry Scheffer to present the story of his invention on Active Addressing." The agreed license covers all Solomon Systech products with MLA driving scheme. "The MLA chipset SSD1870, SSD1881 and SSD1882 are our 1st chipset with MLA," explained Mr. W.M. Lo. "We shall have 10 more new products with MLA to be introduced this year for different display configurations and applications. Some of them will be single chip solutions for cellular phones of large grey scale display. The others will be a further extension of the existing MLA chipset for color PDAs."

Technical Specifications of the MLA Chipset

The SSD1870 is a 4-line MLA, 160 segment outputs LCD column driver with embedded 160 x 240 display RAM. The maximum multiplexing ratio is 240 MUX. This driver can be cascaded to achieve larger display resolution. With 4bit and 8bit input options, this display solution can adapt in wide range of different system applications. In order to achieve lower system power consumption, the driver has a self-refresh capability such that the display data transmission from the controller is not needed when there are no change on the display data.

The SSD1881 and SSD1882 are LCD row drivers with 160 and 240 common outputs respectively. They can support different output shift directions by pin selection. By combining the SSD1870 with different cascade options, 160x160, 160x240 and 320x240 display resolution can be achieved.

- end -