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Renesas Technology Enhances SH-Mobile Application Processor Series for Mobile Phones With Advanced Playback Capability and Features

Posted on: Friday, 5 October 2007, 00:00 CDT

Renesas Technology America, Inc. today announced two new application processors in the SH-Mobile series, expanding the number of devices with the very low power multimedia capability. The SH-MobileL3V2 offers additional video formats, high-resolution video capture and enhanced functionality to control image quality. The small-package SH-MobileUL provides excellent cost performance and is suitable for use in popular mainstream mobile phone models. These processors will accelerate the proliferation of advanced multimedia capture and playback on mobile phones and portable media players, enabling both advanced systems that offer higher image quality, as well as lower-priced systems that offer TV and other multimedia features.

The devices are the newest functionally enhanced versions of Renesas Technology's successful SH-Mobile series of multimedia processors. They both incorporate a high-performance, low-power video processing unit that supports the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (referred to below as H.264) and VC-1 moving-image compression standard commonly used for multimedia content delivery from broadcasters and Web-based content services. This dedicated hardware engine efficiently achieves 30 fps (frame per second) encoding and decoding performance at VGA definition while consuming very low power. The SH-MobileL3V2 and SH-MobileUL are excellent choices for applications such as video mail, video phones, and video clips that require flawless consumer quality audio and video processing. In addition, these application processors can support mobile digital broadcasting systems, including DVB-H, ISDB-T, and DMB.

Both devices have a low power SH4AL-DSP CPU core that achieves high processing performance: 478 MIPS (million instructions per second) at a maximum operating frequency of 266MHz. Thus, they can provide excellent viewing experiences.

About the SH-MobileL3V2 application processor

Features specific to the SH-MobileL3V2 application processor include a gamma-correction function and an advanced image processing function to improve the quality of images in mobile video applications. The gamma-correction function has three kinds of correction -- histogram-extension type, screen-brightness correspondence type, and adaptive-type chroma correction. Image quality can be adjusted for individual TV scenes, enabling clear, high-quality video displays on a variety of display types and characteristics. Unique edge-enhancement technology implemented in the SH-MobileL3V2 prevents fuzziness when a QVGA-size image is enlarged to VGA, WVGA or larger size.

The SH-MobileL3V2 application processor also has a hardware, dedicated 24-bit audio DSP function that readily handles music coded using AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), MP3, or a similar compression system. The on-chip DSP reduces power consumption while offering more audio and speech processing options. For example, it enables multi-channel calling, wide-bandwidth speech codecs, and echo-cancellation capabilities, making the SH-MobileL3V2 ideal for voice-over-IP applications.

A camera interface built into the application processor allows direct connection of an external 5-megapixel-class camera module. Large volumes of image data can be captured from a high-definition camera at high speed. The camera module can also implement various kinds of displays such as electronic image scaling, multi-source blending, and picture-in-picture, by means of low-power hardware image-processing modules. Color-conversion circuitry handles the BT.709 YUV data used in ISDB-T mobile Digital TV broadcasting.

Among the SH-MobileL3V2's other on-chip peripheral functions are an LCD controller that supports 24-bit TFT color liquid crystal panels, an SD memory card interface, a SIM card interface, and a sound interface.

About the SH-MobileUL application processor

Features specific to the SH-MobileUL application processor include an optimized set of peripheral functions specialized for multimedia playback, and a compact 8mm x 8mm package that reduces the circuit board mounting area by approximately 30% or more compared with the previous Renesas product SH-MobileL3V. These characteristics will help customers build new multimedia appliances and phone models that are smaller and cost less.

Price and availability

Product Name

Operating Frequency

Package

Unit Price for 10,000 Unit Lot / Availability

SH-MobileL3V2 (SH7362)

266MHz

281-pin BGA

$24 / Q4 2007

SH-MobileUL (SH7363)

266MHz

224-pin BGA

$13 / Q4 2007

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. is one of the world's leading semiconductor system solutions providers for mobile, automotive and PC/AV (Audio Visual) markets and the world's No.1 supplier of microcontrollers. It is also a leading provider of LCD Driver ICs, Smart Card microcontrollers, RF-ICs, High Power Amplifiers, Mixed Signal ICs, System-on-Chip (SoC), System-in-Package (SiP) and more. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TOKYO:6501)(NYSE:HIT) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO:6503), Renesas Technology achieved consolidated revenue of 953 billion JPY in FY2006 (end of March 2007). Renesas Technology is based in Tokyo, Japan and has a global network of manufacturing, design and sales operations in around 20 countries with about 26,500 employees worldwide. For further information, please visit http://www.renesas.com.

Product names, company names, or brands mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Specifications: New Renesas Technology SH-Mobile Application Processors

Item

SH-MobileL3V2 Specifications

SH-MobileUL Specifications

Product name

SH7362

SH7363

CPU core

SH4AL-DSP

Power supply voltage

Internal: 1.1V to 1.3V

External: 2.5V to 3.6V or 1.65V to 1.95V

Internal: 1.1V to 1.3V

External: 2.5V to 3.6V or 1.65V to 1.95V

Operating frequency

266MHz, max.

Processing performance

478 MIPS (max. at 266MHz operation)

On-chip RAM

-- ILRAM: 4Kbytes

-- RSRAM: 2Kbytes

Cache memory

4-way set associative type; 32Kbytes for instructions + 32Kbytes for data

X/Y memory (for DSP)

16Kbytes

On-chip peripheral functions

-- 5-megapixel camera support functions

--

-- VPU (H.264, MPEG-4, VC-1)

-- DMAC x 6 channels

-- MMU

-- SPU (24-bit dedicated audio DSP)

--

-- 24-bit TFT liquid crystal panel compatible LCD controller

-- 18-bit TFT liquid crystal panel compatible LCD controller

-- Gamma correction function

--

-- Enlargement edge enhancement function

--

Interfaces

-- Dedicated interface (baseband LSI connection, etc.)

-- TS (Transport Stream) interface

-- 4-Gbit NAND/AND flash memory interface

--

-- Video I/O (camera module direct connection interface)

--

-- I2C bus interface

-- Clock synchronous serial interface x 1 channel

-- SIM card interface

--

-- Serial interface with FIFO x 1 channel

-- Asynchronous serial interface x 1 channel

-- Sound interface unit x 2 channels

-- SD memory card interface

-- High-speed serial interface

(Sub LVDS type)

--

-- NTSC/PAL video encoder

--

-- Video output unit

Installed SDRAM

256Mbit SDRAM

128Mbit SDRAM

Package

281-pin BGA (9mm x 11mm x 1.4mm, 0.5mm pin pitch)

224-pin BGA (8mm x 8mm x 1.4mm, 0.5mm pin pitch)

Source: Business Wire

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