Electronics giant Toshiba has licensed technology from the iReady Corporation which enables the easy, cost-effective manufacture of Internet-ready electronics devices, including pagers, cell phones and televisions, the two companies announced today.

Toshiba has licensed iReady's Internet Tuner, an intellectual property product delivered in the form of a system-level silicon design module that can be easily integrated with the other functions of consumer electronics products. Toshiba will develop the Internet Tuner as an ASIC core and introduce it to the world market.

Incorporating this technology in electronics devices, such as mobil phones, for example, makes them Internet-ready at only a small incremental cost and gives users easy wireless access to the Internet for e-mail and other information.

Under terms of the strategic agreement, Toshiba and iReady will jointly work to develop a prototype core allowing devices to access text data on the Internet.

"We are very pleased to have such a close working relationship with a company like Toshiba," said Ryo Koyama, iReady's president and CEO. "The era of Internet-ready consumer appliances is quickly becoming a reality, and by combining our unique Internet Tuner technology with Toshiba's world-leading semiconductor capability, digital interactive and information capabilities will become standard, mainstream features."

Said Tadatoshi Minamikawa, general manager of the LSI Planning Division of Toshiba's Advanced-I Group: "This technology agreement allows Toshiba to move forward aggressively in development of a new generation of Internet-ready consumer electronics products. With its Internet Tuner technology, iReady has demonstrated how very clearly it understands the needs of our industry for reliable, easy-to-manufacture, cost-effective technology serving the mass market."

The core of the Internet Tuner is a scaleable architecture including a set of modules to deliver communications protocols and the rich content of the Internet. The Internet Tuner supports all the standard and several emerging Internet communication protocols and data formats for static media, such as HTML, graphics and electronic mail. Future generations will support streaming media, including video and telephony, Internet commerce standards, and support for dynamic data via Java.

The Internet Tuner is portable to any manufacturing technology, delivers maximum Internet performance and uses minimal power and system resources. It can also be easily integrated into multiple platforms, products and architectures with manufacturing ease.

IReady's development of the Internet Tuner as an intellectual property that can be licensed to electronic systems and semiconductor manufacturers -- rather than manufactured by the developer -- is an example of the trend toward "chipless" semiconductor companies. These companies provide the electronics industry with a new class of products -- re-useable off-the-shelf design elements that can significantly reduce the design time for new electronics products. IReady's customers can use the design to create stand-alone chips or integrate the design into other semi-conductor components.

Tatsuo Sakaue, senior manager of Toshiba's ASIC Technical Marketing and Technology Development said: "Toshiba and iReady have been active in the Virtual Socket Interface, an open alliance of more than 120 members, which is working for a unifying vision for the system-chip industry, and to establish technical standards supporting the mix and match of multiple system chips.

"VSI aims to speed up system-chip design cycles, and the Internet Tuner will be an important core in this endeavor. As a leader of VSI, Toshiba will develop the Internet Tuner prototype to VSI standards and bring it to the market by autumn of this year."

Founded in 1875 in Tokyo, Toshiba Corporation is a world leader in information and communications systems, electronic components, social infrastructure systems, consumer products, and heavy electrical equipment and power generating technology. The company is one of the world's top semiconductor manufacturers and is a leader in the world's portable PC market. In fiscal 1996, Toshiba reported sales of $44 billion and had 186,000 employees world wide.

IReady, of San Jose, CA., was founded in January, 1996, to be the leading provider of enabling technology -- in the form of intellectual property rather than manufactured goods -- for the new generation of consumer electronics products. The company introduced -- in October 1996 -- the first Internet Tuner for adding Internet capability easily and at a low cost to consumer electronics designs. The company is funded by Telos Venture Partners, a venture capital firm specializing in semiconductor and electronic design-tool businesses. Cadence Design Systems Inc., a leading provider of electronic design automation products, is the limited partner in the current venture fund managed by Telos.

Source: iReady Corporation