Philips Semiconductors Announces New Multimedia Bridge Products; SAA7145 and SAA7146 Provide Capability to Build Audio and Video Capture System

Business Wire, Oct 30, 1995

Semiconductors today unveiled the first two members of a new family of Peripheral Connect Interface (PCI) multimedia bridge ICs, the SAA7145 and the SAA7146.

Both ICs are designed with a versatile, new multimedia bridge architecture to provide flexibility to system designers for applications such as video and audio conferencing.

The SAA7145 and SAA7146 offer the capability of building video and audio capture systems that include interfaces for MPEG and video conferencing hardware. The SAA7145 is targeted at low-cost video and audio capture. The SAA7146 is a more full-featured product with multiple asynchronous channels for video and audio capture and playback, as well as higher performance scaler functions. Both devices have the capability of capturing audio, whether through an audio ADC connected to a live video source or from a decompressed MPEG or video conferencing stream, through an I2S serial, digital audio interface.

Both the SAA7145 and SAA7146 are capable of symmetrical, bi-directional transfers in burst mode. In addition to handling video data streams, both devices also support audio capture and parallel slave devices. This architecture can individually direct the various data streams to any memory target within the PC system.

The SAA7145 and SAA7146 interface directly to any D1 style (CCIR-656) or YUV16 video source such as single chip video decoders like the SAA7110 or SAA7111, digital camera outputs, as well as decompress video provided by MPEG or video conferencing engines. The digital data can be transferred directly to the PCI bus or can be color space transformed to meet the required format of the target graphic device.

The new family of SAA714X ICs incorporates an "intelligent device" architecture that allows "on-the-fly" reprogramming. Each multimedia bridge device can reprogram itself without the intervention of the CPU to accomplish tasks that would be prohibitive due to interrupt and software latencies.

The SAA7145 and SAA 7146 will cost $21.39 per 10,000-piece quantity. Samples are available now; production and shipping starts in January 1996.

Philips Semiconductors, a subsidiary of Philips Electronics North America Corporation and an affiliate of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eleventh largest semiconductor supplier in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia, and digital communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by regional customer application labs.

Additional information on Philips Semiconductors can be obtained by accessing their home page at: http://www.semiconductors.phil ips.com/ps/

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