First Look:

Renesas SH-MobileL3V media CPU brings VGA to mobiles

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(07/12/06, 1:54 AM GMT)

San Jose, Ca. - Renesas Technology America, Inc.,has just released its new SH-MobileL3V multimedia processor designed specifically to bring terrestrial digital broadcast capabilities to mobile phones with desktop VGA quality and resolution. 

Brian Davis, director, advanced solutions group, Renesas Technology America, said the SH-MobileL3V multimedia processor incorporates a VPU4 (Video Processing Unit 4) video processing IP with powerful multimedia capabilities.

“For example, in a phone for the Japanese market, the VPU4 IP can process terrestrial digital broadcasting signals compressed using the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC moving-image compression standard at a rate fast enough to encode and decode video at 30 frames per second at VGA definition,” he said. “That performance makes possible smooth video display and recording, equivalent to that of a standard TV.”

The device  also supports systems such as DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast for Handhelds) in Europe and DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) in South Korea. Moreover, since the VPU4 IP can also handle MPEG-4 processing, the SH-MobileL3V can implement a variety of moving-image applications such as video mail, videophones, and video clips.

Other multimedia-oriented features of the device include a direct connection interface to a 5-megapixel-class camera module and a 24-bit LCD interface. The camera interface allows high-speed capture of high-definition image data and versatile image processing.

It can perform electronic image zoom, screen overlapping, and more; has a hardware cursor function; and supports YUV data of BT.709 specifications. The latter makes it possible to extract TV broadcast data and convert it to a JPEG image with no loss of image quality.

The LCD interface supports a 16.78-million-color LCD panel. That capability, said Davis, together with the SH-MobileL3V's high-image-quality compensation functions, enables the implementation of a variety of impressive displays. The chip also includes a sound interface and communication interfaces, as well as SD memory card and SIM card interfaces.

At the heart of the SH-MobileL3V chip is a SuperH(R) type SH4AL-DSP CPU core with cache memory, a direct memory access controller (DMAC) and a memory management unit (MMU) that achieves high processing performance: 389 MIPS at its maximum operating frequency of 216MHz.

This CPU core provides unit-frequency processing performance of 1.8 MIPS/MHz, sufficient for operating a browser with one-segment broadcasting or a similar digital-TV capability.

“Moreover, the fact that the VPU4 IP performs almost all video processing by hardware frees up the CPU to execute software-based computations and control activities,” said Davis. “This division of tasks can allow the design of mobile phones that use lower clock frequencies for decreased power consumption and extended battery life.

In a typical mobile phone, the device connects to the baseband LSI device and performs voice, video, or similar multimedia application processing. Dedicated interfaces allow easy connection to the baseband LSIs of various types of phones.

To learn more, go to www.renesas.com. 

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