CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies, today announced that Nations Technologies Inc. (“Nations”), a leader in China’s information security IC design industry, has licensed and deployed CEVA’s RivieraWaves Bluetooth® low energy IP in its NZ8801 Bluetooth 5 IC designed to provide secure connectivity in a range of power sensitive devices, including wearables, PC peripherals, secure payment cards and the smart home. NZ8801 has already achieved significant success in the market, shipping in tens of millions devices to date.
The NZ8801 IC features a 32-bit high performance, low power consumption processor, and connects and communicates with other devices through standard Bluetooth protocol. It is designed with a single terminal antenna and integrates a number of components which reduce overall BOM costs and application complexity. It can also work with external MCUs to meet various power-sensitive applications.
“We are pleased to announce our relationship with CEVA to integrate their Bluetooth low energy IP into our BLE5 IC,” said Liang Jie, V.P. of Nations. “CEVA’s track record in developing the lowest power connectivity IPs is unrivalled and perfectly aligns with our performance requirements for integrating Bluetooth into our security ICs and other IoT chips.”
“CEVA and Nations have established an excellent working relationship, which culminated in the successful introduction of Nations’ first Bluetooth-enabled IC to the market,” said Ange Aznar, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT Business Unit at CEVA. “This IC has featured in wearables from many top tier OEMs and has recently been designed into fingerprint payment cards for password-free authentication. We’re excited to continue our partnership and work with Nations to address the countless opportunities out there for ultra-low power, secure Bluetooth applications.”
