News Releases

-- Small Footprint, High-Performance Data Manager Offers New Search Technologies Ideal for Enabling Consumer Devices --

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, BOSTON - Sept. 26, 2006 - The Embedded Business Group of Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT,) here at the Embedded Systems Conference today announced the North American release of Entier, a sophisticated relational database management system for embedded devices, at the Embedded Systems Conference. Hitachi’s Entier, which leverages the company’s decades of relational database management system (RDBMS) experience, provides the fullest functionality for the limited space available in small devices such as mobile phones, GPS navigation systems and television and cable set-top boxes.

As consumer devices have evolved, the amount of data they can store has increased as well. It is necessary, however, to manage this expanding data efficiently while simultaneously keeping the database management software footprint small, so that devices can remain small - or get even smaller. Users need to be able to search for the content they want, in the way they want – for example, searching a GPS system to locate a nearby restaurant, or searching a set top box electronic program guide to find a program of interest. This is driving the emergence of a robust data management middleware layer on these devices. Entier answers this need by delivering a powerful relational data manager extended with unique spatial, contextual and incremental text search technologies. It provides consumer device manufacturers with an elegant, uniquely powerful way to provide end users easy access to their information. In addition, with a footprint smaller than one megabyte, Entier enables developers to continue making smaller and smaller devices.

Available in Japan for roughly one year, Entier is currently going to market in its first production application there, and is undergoing evaluation for several other applications. Today’s release marks the English language debut of this critical piece of embedded device technology.

“Hitachi has a long history of building database management systems for the enterprise,” said Takao Nakamura, executive general manager, Hitachi, Ltd. Software Division. “We built Entier so that we could apply that knowledge to the rapidly growing embedded device market. Entier is already being received well in Japan, and we expect that it will be welcomed by embedded developers in the United States.” While typical relational database management systems search only alphanumeric data, Entier offers two unique search technologies. First, it provides the ability to efficiently search spatial data using an SQL query. This capability makes Entier suitable for delivering location-based services to an array of mobile devices, including navigation systems and location-aware smartphones. Second, Entier offers incremental text search, which progressively executes the search, narrowing down the results with each key stroke, and guiding the user with a list of possible next letters in the search term. This is useful for any application that involves searching for entries by name, such as numbers in a phone book or an address in a navigation system.

“We are already seeing customers come up with innovative ideas for using Entier in embedded applications,” said Malcolm Colton, vice president of sales and marketing, Hitachi America Embedded Business Group. “One of the most interesting is to apply our spatial search to media content. Users or content providers rank content according to several criteria, and then use our spatial search technology to effectively ask the question: ‘Find me something like this.’ With the explosion of content threatening to bury us in media, Entier provides a way for users to locate content that they have never heard of but which matches their preferences. This is a key to monetizing content.”

The Entier SDK is now available for the Windows development environment, with a variety of deployment targets.