Sharp's SoC for Multimedia Optimizes Performance

By
iApplianceWeb
(12/13/01, 10:50:33 AM EDT)

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas has shipped beta customers the LH7A400, a 200-MHz System-on-Chip (SoC) with an ARM922T core, offering high performance with low power consumption.

Beta customers span a wide range of applications: wireless handheld gaming devices, smartphones, PocketPCs, home entertainment controllers, and industrial Web-tablets and point-of-sale devices.

The LH7A400 is the second in a family of highly integrated SoCs to be shipped out of the Camas, Washington facility since it was designated Sharp's North American Design Center for microcontrollers (MCU) and SoC components earlier this year.

"The LH7A400 is targeted at today's Internet and Multimedia-centric applications," said Terry Thomas, SMA's director of marketing for Microcontroller and SoC. "Offering the performance of 200-MHz with high integration and functionality coupled with low power consumption and world-class development tools, the LH7A400 allows designers to lower system costs, shorten development cycles, and bring their products to market sooner."

Customers require multimedia devices to be fast and loaded with features. Yet they also expect them to be affordable and have a long battery life. The LH7A400 provides the right balance between performance/features and cost/power consumption.

To provide high performance, the LH7A400 integrates a 200MHz ARM922T core (ARM9TDMI, 8KB Instruction Cache, 8KB Data Cache, MMU, Write-Back Buffer) with a processing speed of about 220 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS). The 80KB of on-chip frame buffer allows a 160x240 16-bit image to reside on-chip, reducing power consumption and optimizing system bandwidth. System bandwidth is further optimized by the on-chip 10-channel DMA engine.

To provide high integration and reduce cost, the LH7A400 integrates a host of functionality to lower total chip count. The programmable LCD controller supports up to 1024x768 resolution, up to 64,000 colors, and 15 gray shades, allowing direct interface to Sharp's highly reflective and advanced TFT. For storage and expandability, The LH7A400 provides glue-less interface to SRAM/SDRAM/flash devices, MMC, PCMCIA/CF, and Smart Cards. For communication, the LH7A400 provides serial, as well as parallel, interfaces (USB, UARTs, Synchronous Interfaces, and AC'97 Codec Interface). The LH7A400 has also a special Watchdog timer to protect the overall system.

To reduce power consumption and increase battery life, the LH7A400 balances performance (200 MHz) with very low leakage current (25uA). This is accomplished by a programmable on-chip PLL and a flexible power management unit that provides the system designer total control over the activities of each function on the LH7A400.

The LH7A400 will be priced under $24 in 10,000 units with production scheduled for Q2, 2002.

Link:
Sharp Microelectronics,