Atmel Introduces New Media Processor to Enhance Media Playback Applications on Digital TVs and Projectors

. . Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the introduction of its next generation media processor suitable for standard and high-definition TVs, flat-panel displays, projectors, portable media servers, and standalone playback boxes. The AT76C120 integrates all the functions required to implement media playback functions onto a single chip.

Atmel’s Director of Multimedia Products, Tassos Markas, remarked, “With the introduction of the AT76C120 device, Atmel is enabling a new line of consumer products with rich media capabilities. Our goal is to enhance the digital experience and allow consumers to enjoy their media content in their native high resolution. The AT76C120 device has the processing power and performance to just do that.”

The AT76C120 device supports high performance still-image and video decoding of media files encoded according to JPEG, MPEG4, MPEG1, Motion JPEG standards as well as of other popular media formats found in digital still cameras. The device contains a high-speed flash card interface that allows quick access to high-resolution images, video and audio streams stored in flash cards by digital still cameras, video cameras, PDAs or camera phones. The media streams are then decompressed, processed, and presented to the user along with overlayed with high-quality graphics. The device has a high-resolution digital output interface which allows users to enjoy the images at their natural full resolution. The device can also capture/playback audio, through its high-resolution digital audio interface and encode/decode them at various formats such as MP3, G.729, , etc.

The device has also a YcbCr (Luminance/Chromincance) capture port that enables reception of broadcast TV signal. With its MPEG4 video encoding engine, AT76C120 can encode video and store it to a mass storage medium thus enabling Personal Video Recorders (PVR) applications on portable media server products.

One of enhancements of the AT76C120 is the new video encoder that supports composite component, and S-Video formats. In addition, a new scaler allows quick resizing of images to the desired display resolution, as well as scaling down images to NTSC/PAL resolution suitable for display in standard definition TVs. An integrated hardware rotation engine provides instantaneous image rotation. Finally, the device has also integrated high-speed Digital to Analog Converters to directly drive displays up to XGA resolution.

The device’s enhanced high-speed flash card interface allows quick access of high-resolution images, video and audio streams stored in flash cards. This high performance interface supports Secure DigitalÒ, MMC MultimediaÒ, Memorystick™, Smartmedia™, CompactFlash™, and Atmel Dataflash® cards. The device also has a USB host capability that allows direct reading from USB flash ”thumb drives” and digital still cameras. The device has an integrated IDE controller for direct interface to hard disk drives and other mass storage class devices to enable PVR and archiving functionality of digital media content.

The AT76C120 is compatible with its Atmel predecessors (i.e., AT76C112, AT76C113P). It’s an integrated ARM7TDMI™ processor that controls the entire application and manages file-system, decoding, and display functions. In addition, all necessary peripherals including TV video output, USB, UART and SPI, digital audio interfaces have been integrated on chip, to minimize the total system cost.

Production samples, evaluation boards, software libraries, as well as full application software are available now. The part is priced at $8 for quantities of 100,000 parts.

About Atmel

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS, BiCMOS, SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies. For more information on Atmel’s products, please visit us at: www.atmel.com

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