SiliconBlue chips selected for new Citizen Eco-Drive watch

SANTA CLARA, USA: SiliconBlue Technologies announced that Citizen Watch, the largest watchmaker and a leader in advanced watch technology, has selected SiliconBlue’s iCE65L08 device to be used in their new Eco-Drive Satellite Wave watch, the world’s first light-powered GPS-synchronized watch.

The highly advanced functionality of the Eco-Drive watch required ultra low-power, small footprint devices that could also deliver the highest performance. Fabricated on TSMC’s 65-nm low-power standard CMOS process, the iCE65L08 device utilizes wafer-level chip scale package technology, enabling a tiny, 4x5 mm footprint and capacity of 8,000 logic cells.

“We wanted to integrate new, highly innovative features into our Eco-Drive watches but without increasing power consumption, cost or overall size of the product. Most importantly, we had to be able to implement the product enhancements within weeks in order to meet customer commitments,” said Dr. Chikara Kimura, Citizen System Development Section, Watch Development Department, Technical Development Division. “The SiliconBlue CMDs met all constraints together with superior customer service and support.”

“Citizen is the leader in watches. It is a tremendous honor to demonstrate our superior technology within their high-tech, elegant Eco-Drive watch,” said Kapil Shankar, CEO of SiliconBlue. “From this award-winning watch to small, portable smartphones and other handheld products, we continue to enable new features through our programmable, low-power, small footprint CMDs. When time to market, cost, power consumption and size are important, SiliconBlue CMDs are the ideal solutions.”

The Eco-Drive next-generation watch ensures precision timekeeping through innovative technology developed by Citizen. The timepiece searches for one of the 24 navigation satellites that orbit the earth, capturing the day, date and time signals the satellite emits from space, 20,000 kilometers above the earth. Since the satellite signals are controlled by atomic clocks, this watch’s timekeeping is ultra precise.