TOKYO, DUSSELDORF, Germany and SANTA CLARA, Calif., October 1, 2001 — NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY; FTSE: 6701q.l; Toronto: 6701) with its semiconductor subsidiaries in the United States and Europe, NEC Electronics Inc. and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH., and VoicePump, Inc., a DSP Group (NASDAQ: DSPG) subsidiary, have added VoIP functionality to the turnkey reference design for Integrated Access Devices (IADs) supporting Voice over Digital Subscriber Line (VoDSL) and now, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications.

The VoDSL501 reference design enables customers to quickly bring to market devices such as DSL bridging and routing modems and broadband IADs for multi-tenant offices, apartment buildings and residential areas. The reference design combines a powerful NEC network controller and software with VoicePump's integrated digital signal processing (DSP) hardware and software and mixed-signal technologies for an integrated, versatile and cost-effective IAD solution.

“VoicePump’s VP140 DSP was specifically designed to meet the needs of VoDSL and VoIP applications by integrating virtually all VoDSL-specific hardware and software components on a single chip,” said Cole Erskine, chief technical officer at VoicePump. The VoDSL501 reference design is optimized for use in VoDSL and VoIP applications. By integrating VoicePump’s complete voice-band solution for VoDSL functionality into the reference design — including multiple voice channels and codec support — customers can realize substantial savings in development time and cost.

“The tremendous demand for bundling voice services with broadband access to homes and small businesses has increased the pressure on our customers to create next-generation integrated access devices and residential gateway platforms,” said Kyuichi Hareyama, general manager of NEC Corporation, 2nd System LSI Division.“VoicePump’s application-oriented solution combined with NEC’s network controller provides an efficient, highly integrated and cost-effective method for enabling system designers to bring their VoDSL and VoIP applications to market quickly. The VoDSL501 uses VoicePump’s VP140 DSP for voice processing, NEC’s µPD98501 network controller for system control and protocol handling, and a DSL physical layer interface. The NEC µPD98501 network controller features NEC’s high-performance 64-bit 100 MHz MIPS® RISC V_R4120A™ microprocessor core. The controller also has an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cell processor, a communications-device-class universal serial bus (USB) controller, and two 10/100 Mbps Ethernet controllers. In addition, the µPD98501 supports the ATM adaptation layer 2 (AAL2), standard for multiple channels of packetized voice in parallel with broadband Internet data access.

The NEC/VoicePump VoDSL501 reference design is particularly well suited for implementing the recently ratified Annex A to DSL Forum specification TR-039. This is also known as the standard for Broadband Loop Emulation Services (BLES), and is the primary means of deploying VoDSL networks today

The VP140, with its speech codecs, permits up to four channels of real-time G.723.1/A 6.4 kbps Multi-Pulse Maximum Likelihood Quantization and 5.3 kbps Algebraic Codebook-Excited Linear Prediction (ACELP). Four channels of the ITU-T G.729A/B standard for 8 kbps Conjugate Structure-ACELP are also supported, as well as any combination of any speech codec on any channel, each with fully compliant ITU-T G.168 echo cancellation (32 milliseconds).

The VP140 integrates DSP Group’s TeakLite™ programmable DSP core with all requisite peripherals to execute four packet-voice channels on a single processor. The highly integrated DSP includes program/data memory, a host processor interface, an analog front end, and analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. The VP140 family also integrates the necessary DSP firmware to perform all the vital DSP functions, including speech compression and decompression, echo cancellation and associated telephony signaling functions.

The VoDSL501 reference design comes packaged with all the necessary hardware and software.

Pricing and Availability

The VoDSL501 is available now, and the VoIP feature will be available in December 2001. The reference design is priced at $60,000.

NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l) is a leading provider of Internet solutions, dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its customers in the key computer, network and electron device fields through its three market-focused in-house companies: NEC Solutions, NEC Networks and NEC Electron Devices. NEC Corporation, with its in-house companies, employs more than 150,000 people worldwide and saw net sales of 5,409 billion Yen (approx. US$43 billion) in fiscal year 2000-2001. For further information, please visit the NEC home page at http://www.nec.com

About NEC Electronics Inc.

NEC Electronics Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is one of the leading developers, manufacturers and suppliers of semiconductor products in the United States. Committed to meeting customers’ cost, performance and time-to-market requirements, the company offers solutions ranging from standard products, including electron components, to system-on-a-chip (SOC) solutions, as well as customized products for next-generation designs. NEC Electronics also offers customers the benefits of a local manufacturing facility in Roseville, California, and the global manufacturing capabilities of its parent company, NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY). For more information about products offered by NEC Electronics Inc., please visit the NEC Electronics web site at http://www.necel.com.

NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH

NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, is a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of semiconductor products in Europe. Committed to meeting customers’ cost, performance and time-to-market requirements, the company offers solutions ranging from standard products to system-on-a-chip (SOC) solutions, as well as customized products for next-generation designs. NEC Electronics also offers customers the benefit of state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Scotland and Ireland, and the global manufacturing capabilities of its parent company, NEC Corporation. For more information, please visit the NEC Electronics web site at www.nec.de

DSP Group

DSP Group, Inc., is a global leader in the development and marketing of high-performance, cost-effective, licensable digital signal processing cores. The company’s family of DSP cores provides ideal solutions for low-power, cost-driven applications, such as cellular, broadband communications, VoIP, multimedia, advanced telecommunication systems, disk-drive controllers and many other types of embedded-control applications. By combining its DSP core technologies with its proprietary, advanced speech-processing algorithms, DSP Group also delivers a wide range of enabling, application-specific ICs for full-featured integrated telephony products and applications, including 900MHz/2.4GHz wireless technologies. DSP Group maintains an international presence with offices located around the globe. Additional information about DSP Group is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.dspg.com/ and VoicePump on the web at http://www.voicepump.com/.

NEC Electronics Inc. is either a registered trademark or trademark of NEC Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other registered trademarks or trademarks are property of their respective owners. TeakLite is a trademark of DSP Group. All other registered trademarks or trademarks are property of their respective owners.