Thursday, December 6, 2007

HITACHI SELECTS PLX USB 2.0 CONTROLLER FOR WORLD’S FIRST BLU-RAY DISC CAMCORDERS

PLX NET 2272 Chip Provides New Hitachi Camcorders with Up to 480Mb/sec Transfer Speeds, Saves Power

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Dec 3, 2007 – PLX Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLXT), the leading global supplier of PCI Express® (PCIe®), USB and other standard interconnect silicon, today announced that Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT/TSE: 6501) has selected PLX’s NET 2272 USB 2.0 Controller chip as the I/O interconnect solution for Hitachi’s new DZ-BD7HA and DZ-BD70A products, the world’s first Blu-ray Disc™ camcorders. The NET 2272 provides data transfer speeds of up to 480Mb/sec between the camcorder and any USB-enabled PC, while its industry-leading small package and low power consumption help the new Hitachi camcorders achieve their light weight, compact dimensions and long battery charge.

“Hitachi is one of the world’s most innovative consumer-product makers and we’re pleased to be its USB-interconnect provider for the ground-breaking DZ-BD7HA and DZ-BD70A camcorders,” said David Raun, PLX vice president of marketing and business development. “The applications of PLX interconnect devices span an ever-broadening range of products – communications, embedded, industrial, and the rapidly growing consumer market, which has fully embraced USB 2.0 for PC connections.”

“The DZ-BD7HA and DZ-BD70A camcorders deliver a true breakthrough video experience featuring Hitachi innovation and passion,” said Hiroaki Tachibana, senior engineer of Hitachi Camcorder Engineering Dept. “We selected the PLX NET 2272 as the camcorder’s high-performance USB solution because the controller’s fast transfer speeds, small package size and low power consumption presented the very feature set we needed for these revolutionary new products. Hitachi looks forward to working with PLX Technology on future visionary projects.”

The first-to-market DZ-BD7HA features Blu-ray Disc (BD) recording capability, along with a built-in 30GB hard disk drive (HDD), which can record approximately four hours of 1920 x 1080 full high-definition (HD) video. (DZ-BD70A does not include a HDD.) With a single push of a button, the DZ-BD7HA can copy the contents from the HDD to the BD. Easy editing functions such as split, delete and connect can be made right in the camcorder before using the one-touch dubbing function to burn BD copies. Thanks to the NET 2272’s high-speed transfer capabilities, “raw” or edited video content on the DZ-BD7HA also can be transferred rapidly from its disk drive to a PC for storage and/or additional editing.

PLX® USB controllers offer superior performance, strict compliance to industry standards and dramatic power savings. The devices are widely used in printers, portable media players, GPS systems, TV tuners, PCs, laptops, WLAN devices, mobile phones, digital cameras, and camcorders.

The NET 2272’s integrated local-bus controller, industry-leading 40MBytes/sec. of sustained USB data transfer, ultra low power consumption, and variable I/O voltage of 1.8V to 5.0V deliver an unprecedented combination of size, power, and performance to portable applications. The NET 2272’s local bus is capable of 30 independent data streams and can connect directly (without “glue logic”) to the majority of the CPUs and DSPs used in these applications; its interface appears as an SRAM, which most CPUs and DSPs support natively. In addition to its availability in a 10mm x 10mm, 64-pin TQFP package, the controller is also available in 6mm x 6mm, 64-ball BGA, lead-free packaging.

For more information on the new Hitachi DZ-BD7H and DZ-BD70 Blu-ray camcorders, go to http://av.hitachi.com/camcorder/.

For more information on the PLX NET 2272 controller and other PLX USB interconnect devices, go to http://plxtech.com/usb.

In addition to its USB controller family, PLX also offers 26 PCIe switches and bridges, thus providing board and system designers with the most extensive and proven lineup of interconnect products. The company’s PCIe switches range in density from three to 12 ports and from five to 48 lanes, while the PCIe bridges provide PCI, PCI-X and local-bus support. The PLX portfolio includes the highest performance per watt, with latency as low as 110ns, as well as integrated non-transparency and Hot-Plug functionality to help reduce customers’ bill-of-material costs.

All PLX interconnect products are fully supported by a family of Rapid Development Kits (RDKs), which feature complete hardware and software tools to accelerate design cycles. For detailed information on all PLX products, please visit www.plxtech.com.

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