Technology News

Amlogic offers Cortex-A9 processor with HDTV

November 15, 2010 // Peter Clarke

Fabless chip company Amlogic Inc. has announced that its AML8726-M chip combines 1080p high-definition video decoding together with an ARM Cortex-A9 and Mali-400 graphics. The high-definition video decoding is performed using proprietary circuits, Amlogic said. The chip is intended for use in gaming and other multimedia consumer devices such as digital photo frames.

"The maximum clock frequency is 1-GHz. We used a SMIC 65-nm process. Power consumption is less than 2-W at the maximum clock rate," said Michael Mo, senior director of business development at Amlogic, in an email correspondence with EE Times. "Sometimes it's not just about delivering the fastest frequency or even the lowest power consumption," said Mo, in a statement. "Compelling consumer products are created by delivering the right mix of performance and features at the right price."

Amlogic (Santa Clara, Calif.), which was founded in 1995, has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, China. It has used 90-nm process technology from SMIC in the past.

The AML8726-M chip is available for sampling and an Android OS-based reference development platform will be available in the first quarter of 2011. The AML 8726-M includes: 1080p video for H.264, VC-1, WMV, MPEG1/2/4 and 1080p HDMI output; the ability to run Android 2.2, Linux, OpenGL ES 2.0 and browser support for HTML5, Adobe Flash 10.1 and Adobe Air.

The connectivity options provided by the AML8726-M include 10/100 Ethernet, two USB interfaces, 3-in-1 card reader and SATA interfaces along with software driver support for external Wi-Fi chipsets.

The partnership with ARM began just over one year ago with Amlogic licensing ARM intellectual property and making use of ARM design services to aid in development. "By using CPU, GPU and system IP technology from ARM, we were able to bring this new chip platform to market in record time," said John Zhong, CEO of Amlogic, in the same statement. "The ARM IP is designed with the entire SoC system in mind, which helped us minimize the development window to meet consumer demand for the next generation of electronics."


Related links and articles:

www.amlogic.com

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