Freescale Digital Rights Software Secures Portable Audio Leadership; Digital Audio Manufacturers Use Freescale Processor Platform to Enable Microsoft Windows Media Technologies

Business Wire, Sept 14, 2005

SHENZHEN, China -- Designers of portable media players today received the inside track on digital rights management at a hands-on training seminar hosted by Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL) (NYSE:FSL.B) and Arrow Electronics.

Working with Freescale's SCF5250 audio processor family and Microsoft's Windows Media(R) Digital Rights Management (DRM) 10, Windows Media Audio (WMA) 9 and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), player manufacturers are riding the wave of "pay as you go" entertainment subscription services.

Player manufacturers face increased pressure to provide flexible, yet secure hardware platforms. This pressure comes from consumers who want increased player functionality and content availability, combined with content owners' desires to implement rights protection over a variety of licensing models.

"Freescale's support of Windows Media DRM 10 demonstrates a strong commitment to delivering the best entertainment experiences for consumers," said Sam Yang, senior business development manager of Digital Media Division of Microsoft. "Through our collaboration, we are helping manufacturers with licensing, implementation and certification."

Early adopters use Freescale platform

Backed by an extensive software library and reference designs, Freescale's SCF5249 and SCF5250 audio processors have helped early adopters deliver Windows Media DRM 10-based players into new markets.

"Freescale's SCF5250 audio processor delivered the performance and security features we required on our YH-J70 multimedia player," said Heonhwa Chung, vice president, Digital Audio Business R&D team at Samsung Electronics. "Windows Media DRM 10 becomes an important feature in our product; using Freescale digital audio solutions and three-axis low-G sensor, we feel our product will be a hit once it is launched in the European and North America market."

In addition to audio decoding, consumers are looking for solutions like JPEG viewing and MPEG4 decode. The SCF5249 and SCF5250 were among the first processor solutions to offer video decoding functions. Powered by the ColdFire(R) V2 32-bit processor core, these devices also include an on-chip digital signal processor (DSP) engine that provides enhanced multiply-accumulate (eMAC) processing for media applications.

Freescale reference design

Freescale plans to continue providing at no cost reference design schematics, layout files and component lists for 1.8-inch, 20GB hard disk drive (HDD) media players with color liquid crystal display (LCD) and support for JPEG and MPEG4. To complete the solution, Freescale has teamed with its key distribution partners and design houses to offer turn-key solutions for customers in the Asia Pacific region.

"Arrow believes that the demand in the MP3 market segment will remain strong in the next few years. Leveraging Arrow's long standing partnership with Freescale, our strong technical support capability and alliance with innovative design partners such as Optek, we are able to provide complete turnkey solutions in Windows Media DRM 10 based upon the latest technology from Freescale. Our independent design house solutions can help these customers shorten time-to-market and better capture immediate business opportunities," said David Shen, vice president, technical marketing, Arrow Asia Pacific.

Freescale's next-generation audio processor is planned to include on-chip integration of USB high-speed on-the-go (OTG) technology with a tamper-proof real-time clock (RTC) and a high-speed ultra direct memory access (UDMA) advanced technology attachment (ATA) interface. This will help manufacturers reduce chip count and provide even smaller form factors. Freescale also includes an automotive controller area network (CAN) interface in the same device; this enables Freescale to bring its digital audio solution to the portable audio and car audio markets.

To learn more about Freescale's audio processor family, visit http://www.freescale.com/files/pr/drm.html

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL) (NYSE:FSL.B) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. Freescale became a publicly traded company in July 2004 after more than 50 years as part of Motorola, Inc. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale, a member of the S&P 500(R), is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2004 sales of $5.7 billion (USD). www.freescale.com

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