NXP to provide ICs for hearing implants

LONDON — Chip company NXP BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) has a agreed to design and manufacture ICs for hearing implant products from Cochlear Ltd. (Sydney, Australia). The agreement includes the definition, development and supply of speech processor and wireless communication ICs to be used in forthcoming Cochlear products.

Cochlear's headquarters and principal manufacturing facility is in Australia with additional manufacturing in Sweden. The company has more than 2,000 employees and more than 180,000 people, across more than 100 countries, have used one of Cochlear's hearing aids.

"We are proud to contribute our ultra low power magnetic induction wireless and CoolFlux DSP technology to enable Cochlear's industry-leading hearing implant solutions," said Rene Penning de Vries, NXP CTO, in a statement. "This long-term partnership with Cochlear is another example of NXP's strategy to achieve leadership in high performance mixed-signal application domains. It also illustrates NXP's engagement in the medical domain, where we target new applications such as wireless implanted sensors, medical body area networks and personal healthcare devices."

Neither the value of the agreement to NXP, nor when NXP would deliver chips to Cochlear was disclosed.

Related links and articles:

www.cochlear.com

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