LONDON — NXP BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. have announced the delivery of a 45-nm platform for LCD TV, the TV550. NXP claimed it is the world's such IC on 45-nm manufacturing offering a "single-chip" approach and said it is delivering engineering samples to its lead customers.

The TV550 includes NXP's PNX85500 processor, built on TSMC's 45-nm low power process technology, although it is not clear whether the processor is an IC or a core within a larger IC.

NXP said it selected TSMC's 45LP process because it supported multiple threshold voltages, which in turn helped achieve lower power consumption. The process also offered an SRAM cell size of 0.299 square microns. The TSMC 45 LP process offers designers up to twice the density of 65-nm processes with lower power consumption and up to 40 percent smaller die size. Compared with TSMC 40G technology, the 45LP requires less photo masks, NXP said.

"Digital switchover and high definition content are the major demands for the TV industry," said Lou Schreurs, business line TV general manager at NXP, in a statement. "With TSMC's valuable experience in advanced CMOS technologies and NXP's TV system design expertise, we are able to deliver these high end features with a reduced bill-of-materials."

"NXP has clearly achieved its leadership with the availability of this single-chip digital TV SoC. The device is 'right-the-first-time' fully functional silicon that delivered as flip-chip packaged samples just eight weeks after tape out," said John Wei, senior director of advanced technology marketing for TSMC, in the same statement.

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