Renesas Technology s SH MobileL3V Multimedia Processor Enables Mobile Phones With Digital TV Broadcast Capabilities & VGA Size Video

Renesas Technology has announced the latest expansion of its SH-Mobile product line with the new SH-MobileL3V, a multimedia processor designed to bring terrestrial digital broadcast capabilities to mobile phones.
The SH-MobileL3V 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 processes 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. 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. 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.

This high-performance device is destined to further accelerate the race to pack more and better TV and still-picture features into advanced mobile phones, said Brian Davis, director of the advanced solutions group for Renesas Technology America. The SH-MobileL3V multimedia processor is a key enabling component for new phone models that can utilize digital broadcasting services. Those services are being introduced in various countries throughout the world, boosting phone sales and wireless usage.

The device also features 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 image processing. It offers electronic image zoom, screen overlapping, 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, together with the SH-MobileL3V’s high-image-quality compensation functions, allows for a variety of 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 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. Since the VPU4 IP performs almost all video processing by hardware, the CPU is free to execute software-based computations and control activities. This division of tasks can allow the design of mobile phones that use lower clock frequencies for decreased power consumption and extended battery life.

The SH-MobileL3V processor is packaged in a 281-pin CSP (chip-scale package: 9mm x 11mm x 1.4mm, with 0.5mm pin pitch). 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.