The Science and Art of Being Found

Imagine being able to find your way, instantly, anywhere in the world, including walking in the wilderness or an unfamiliar city, driving in a car or navigating a boat. Or think of how wonderful it would be to locate a lost child in a crowded amusement park, a car parked somewhere in a multi-acre parking lot or a cellular phone caller in distress.

SiRF Technology, Inc. is the world leader in creating technologies that confer “location awareness” or “location intelligence” to a wide range of consumer products. SiRF’s location-awareness solutions are based on the Global Positioning System (GPS), the same technology used to guide everything from the space shuttle to car navigation systems to handheld devices used by backpackers. Created by the U.S. military, GPS uses more than 24 satellites in orbit around the earth to provide always-on location information free of charge to any GPS receiver, anywhere in the world.

SiRF capitalizes on its architectural innovations, system design and silicon expertise, RF capabilities and state of the art semiconductor manufacturing technology to make GPS capabilities accurate, affordable, power efficient and compact enough to be used in consumer applications. SiRF’s extensive patent and intellectual property portfolio improves on conventional GPS by providing location awareness where other approaches cannot, including under dense foliage, in steep ravines, in “urban canyons” and even in some indoor environments. In the constant tension between lost and found, SiRF’s GPS solutions tip the odds in favor of being found.

Location Awareness Goes Mainstream: Focus on Four Consumer Platforms

Since its founding in 1995, SiRF has launched breakthrough GPS architectures and semiconductor innovations directed specifically at incorporating GPS-based location awareness into mainstream consumer products. SiRF’s vision, simply stated, is to bring location awareness to virtually everything that moves.

SiRF focuses on four mainstream consumer platforms where it believes its GPS technologies can have the greatest impact. The four platforms, and some examples of specific products that could use SiRF technologies, include the following:

• E911 for cell phones
• Location aware security devices
• Child and personal locators
• Smart phones for location based services
• Asset trackers

• Car navigation systems
• Car security systems
• Auto emergency response systems
• Telematics systems
• Fleet tracking systems

• PDAs with GPS and mapping capabilities
• Compact Flash and other GPS peripherals
• Laptop PC's with GPS for GIS

• Handheld GPS products for outdoors
• Sports watches with embedded GPS
• Marine navigation GPS systems
• Location enabled digital cameras

SiRF has incorporated the full complexity of GPS technology into its second generation SiRFstarII architecture. SiRFstarII includes a number of technologies aimed at overcoming technical challenges of applying GPS to consumer applications. SiRF’s three current GPS product families, the SiRFstarIIe, SiRFstarIIe/LP and the SiRFstarII/t, combined with SiRF’s platform optimized technologies, provide customers with a choice of solutions for integration into their end products.

SiRF provides full GPS solutions consisting of the following:

• GPS baseband chips featuring SiRF’s patented GPS signal processing technology and a variety of peripherals including CPU and memories optimized for various market segments
• GPS RF integrated circuits integrating nearly all external circuitry (including IF filters) to simplify receiver design and reduce overall BOM cost
• GPS software based on a modular design methodology that allows customization for different applications as well as sharing CPU and memory resources with the customer application code
• Toolkits allowing customers to quickly evaluate SiRF’s product performance using special SiRF data collection and analysis software and subsequently to develop their systems around SiRF’s products with a complete set of development boards, reference designs, software development environment, bills of materials and complete product documentation.

At its inception, the GPS business was geared to vertical markets centering on professional applications for GPS. Since its founding, SiRF has focused on horizontal, high volume consumer-based GPS applications, creating a different, more cost-effective business model. This focus in both market and application allows SiRF to bring more dedicated development and support resources to bear on the fast growth GPS markets.

SiRF, seizing the opportunity presented by the unique experience of its management team in the personal computer IC market, has been a catalyst for bringing GPS to the masses. SiRF has developed a flexible and innovative business model built around four critical success factors:

1. Rapid innovation using new architectural concepts and leading edge semiconductor manufacturing technology: Using a fabless semiconductor model, SiRF is able to focus on rapid introduction of new GPS chipset designs based on the latest semiconductor processes, design tools and geometries for both RF and digital integrated circuits.
2. Market-specific software to customize GPS for specific market needs. SiRF bases its designs on a common architecture, the SiRFstarII, which includes technology to improve the GPS receiver performance in low signal strength areas, to speed up the time to a location fix and to intelligently manage power consumption. Beyond that, SiRF has developed software that tailors GPS performance for the specific use characteristics of the target markets. Examples include:
   1. SiRFLoc™: SiRFLoc improves GPS location capability in wireless system environments by utilizing the wireless infrastructure to assist GPS, improving extremely weak signal reception. It is ideally suited for cell phones and other wireless handheld devices that must work in many signal constrained environments.
   2. SiRFNav™: SiRFNav takes advantage of a host computer platform’s resources to decrease the cost and improve the performance of GPS-based navigation for in-car navigation platforms and location enabled PDAs.
      
   3. SiRFDRive™: SiRFDRive™ optimizes positioning solutions for automobiles by intelligently combining measurements from GPS and Dead Reckoning (DR) vehicle sensors, such as odometers, gyros and anti-lock braking systems (ABS).
3. Product support for standard and customized solutions. SiRF provides a complete set of standard toolkits that let customers take advantage of its special features and makes it easy for them to integrate GPS technology into their products. SiRF also has engineering resources dedicated to developing customized location based solutions based on SiRF’s technology for selected high volume customers.
4. Flexible product implementation, often partnering with value added manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers and service providers to offer customers a range of volume appropriate solutions.
   1. Modules: SiRF works with Value Added Manufacturers (VAMs) to sell subsystem- or system-level products based on SiRF’s architecture to enable end customers to get their products to market quickly and cost effectively.
   2. Chipsets: SiRF sells GPS chipsets and software directly to higher volume customers who are seeking the lower unit costs that can be gained from greater levels of integration.
   3. IP Licenses: SiRF selectively licenses its core level technology to very high-volume, integration-driven customers who are heavily constrained by issues such as size, power consumption and cost, enabling them to meet their market needs in a cost-effective manner. In addition SiRF works with a select group of semiconductor partners, who are leading providers of system of chip solutions to SiRF’s target markets, to co-develop market-specific implementations using SiRF’s GPS core.