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SCMP Reporter

Motorola's newest product promises to bring long life and prosperity without breathing fire.

  The DragonBall MC68328 is an intelligent microchip used to power hand-held electronics such as games, organisers, portable videos, advanced pagers, cellular phones and personal digital assistants.

  In more technical terms, it is a 68 K integrated processor designed for any 16-bit system which requires LCD display.

  Joe Yiu, vice-president of Motorola Semi-conductors, said the chip was named specially for Hong Kong people.

  'Three means life, two means ease and eight prosperity. The chip is lively, easy to use and whoever uses it is going to get rich,' he said.

  Motorola's invention has won one of the 1996 Federation of Hong Kong Industries Consumer Product Design awards.

  Electronic notepads, such as personal digital organisers, are products which will benefit from the DragonBall chip.

  Mr Yiu said the organisers had been on the market for about 10 years but had only been powered by a simple microchip.

  With a DragonBall-powered organiser, functions become more advanced.

  American company US Robotics has used the chip for its Pilot pocket electronic organiser, priced under US$300.

  'This one chip has the power to replace 20 chips. It has lifted the performance of basic organisers,' Mr Yiu said.

  The Pilot organiser contains a date book, address book, memo pad, calculator and list pad. Its information can also be downloaded to personal computers.

  Mr Yiu said the DragonBall chip provided the technology to introduce three crucial features to the electronic notebook.

  He said its graphics were clear and fast responding, it had power writing software enabling character recognition and it switched off automatically to conserve power.

  'It has intelligent power management to conserve the battery, so it lasts months rather than days.'   Entering data into the organiser can be done by writing directly on a section of the screen. The software enables data entry up to 30 words per minute and text recognition is highly accurate.

  Mr Yiu said Motorola had also developed the software to ensure the organisers were multi-lingual. English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese character recognitions were possible and Arabic was being developed.

  It took Motorola eight months to design, assemble and test the chip at its headquarters in the Silicon Harbour Centre, Tai Po.

  Mr Yiu said the multi-million-dollar project demonstrated the competency of Hong Kong's electronic industry.

  'It not only shows that a Hong Kong company can design a very complex chip but can manufacture it with quality using a highly skilled development team,' he said.

  The team comprised Motorola experts from Hong Kong, Beijing, the US and Japan.

  Motorola is one of the world's leading providers of wireless communications, semi-conductor and advanced electronic systems, components and services.

  The company's major equipment businesses include cellular telephones, two-way radios, paging and data communications, personal communications, automotive, defence and space electronics and computers.



Tiny dragon has giant potential