Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced to market its propriety Handshake Technology to IC manufacturers and design houses via Handshake Solutions, a new Line of Business within its Technology Incubator. This disciplined design methodology and production-ready tool-set allows self-timed circuitry to be exploited in a commercial environment while meeting the strict cost and design cycle times of today’s markets. Using Handshake Technology, Philips Semiconductors has already implemented self-timed circuitry in numerous successful products, shipping tens of millions of individual ICs in several applications areas such as identification, wireless and automotive.

"Handshake Technology enables designers to deliver the longer battery lifetimes and increased functionality that consumers want, while reducing the time and money spent on product development and system integration," said Wouter Van Roost, CEO of Handshake Solutions. "By launching Handshake Solutions as a dedicated Line of Business, Philips is establishing self-timed circuits as a credible option for IC design and spearheading the drive towards standardization that will speed the arrival of next-generation products.

Started as a Philips Research project almost 20 years ago, Handshake Technology has evolved through continued development into a proven methodology that is compatible with standard design tools and cell libraries. Drawing on this experience, Handshake Solutions has developed a complete support package that enables IC manufacturers to leverage the benefits of Handshake Technology in an easy-to-use fashion. The support package includes a growing selection of standard IP blocks, design services and tools, encouraging IP re-use and reducing time-to-market.

Offering ultra-low power consumption, low electromagnetic emission (EME) and easy integration of RF and analog components with digital circuitry, Handshake Technology is particularly suited to contactless and dual-interface smart cards, wireless connectivity applications and harsh electromagnetic environments such as the car. Handshake Technology replaces the power-hungry global clock of traditional designs with a system of request and acknowledgement signals or handshakes. Only those parts of a system actively involved in task execution require power, significantly extending battery lifetimes and allowing more functionality to run from the same power supply.

The asynchronous nature of the logic transitions also means that the EME generated is both spread-spectrum and far lower in intensity than the harmonic EME generated by a clocked system. Furthermore, ground bounce is virtually eliminated, greatly simplifying the integration of analog and RF circuitry within digital designs. Handshake Technology designs also react almost instantly to external asynchronous inputs and can operate over wide temperature and supply voltage ranges, automatically adjusting to changes in gate propagation.

 

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  1. 2004-01-01T00:00:00.0000000-08:00Foton Emission photo of clocked and Handshake 80C51 Microcontroller

For media enquiries only, please contact:

Hans Driessen
Philips - Handshake Solutions
Public Relations Department
Phone: +31.40.2746692
Fax: +31.40.2744947
Email: hans.driessen@philips.com
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world’s biggest electronics companies and Europe’s largest, with sales of EUR 29 billion in 2003. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 165,300 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, semiconductors, and medical systems. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter