Oak bids for multimedia role

Electronic News, April 4, 1994

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.--Oak Technology this wek will roll out an IDE CD-ROM controller incorporating drivers for the new AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) specification developed by Microsoft, peripherals vendors and PC makers. Longer range as part of its move into the multimedia market, Oak has launched a MPEG project headed by a former C-Cube Microsystems executive that involves development of an on-chip 32-bit RISC engine with supporting bus and interface logic.

Oak has been selling a previous generation CD-ROM controller, its ISA-based OTI-012, in the Far East, where its customers have included Mitsumi, Philips, Aztech, Wearnes and Optics Storage. By leveraging the availability of CD-ROM mechanisms from Philips, Oak is targeting computer OEMs in the United States that may be willing to undertake their own product development, said Don Bryson, senior vice president for marketing and engineering. Phillips LMSI subsidiary is also starting to make CD-ROm drives available in the U.S.

Oak is planning to make complete engineering kits--including prototype CD-ROM drive, software and BIOS support, available by June. The OTI-011, the new IDE CD-ROM controller, is priced at $8.95 in 10,000-unit quantities. It is packaged in a 100-pin PQFP and operates with industry-standard 8-bit microcontrollers.

Mr. Bryson said new customers for the OTI-011 include NEC as well as companies in Singapore. He said Oki's new device is the first commercially available IDE CD-ROM controller for the merchannt market; Sanyo and Sony make the devices in Japan. According to Oak, it has sold more than 1.2 million CD-ROM controllers in Japan.

The previous generation OTI-012 CD-ROM controller, which required SRAM buffers, had registers which were a superset of Sanyo's LC89510 registers. The new OTI-011 provides burst transfer rates of up to 8MB/sec. to host using DRAM. It also features a DSP interface and EDC/ECC coding.

While Oak expects competition fromt he likes of Western Digital, it believes that its firmware support, existing customer base and time to market will give the OTI-011 a boost. Adaptec, meanwhile, has been successful in the SCSI-based CD-ROM market.

With the IDE interface widely available in PCs, IDE-based CD-ROm sales are set to take off, according to Oak. The ATAPI specification, meanwhile, provides plug and play capability and increases CD-ROM performance compared to ISA interface drives, according to Oak. Mr. Bryson said ATAPI drivers will also be built into Microsoft's upcoming Chicago operating system.

The new OTI-011 supports Sony-Phillips CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA and CD-I formats. It will support current double-speed CD-ROM drives as well as future 4X drives using two 4-bit wide DRAMs, Mr. Bryson said. Follow-on devices, the OTI-910 and -810 will support up to 8x speeds and are due in Q1, 1995.

Fabless Oak will also begin using a new foundry in Korea to complement its existing partners, TSMC in Taiwan and Seiko Epson in Japan.

Oak, which was founded by David Tsang in 1987, is now a company with a $60 million annual run rate; however, the company has been moving away from the fiercely competitive core logic and hard disk drive controller markets. Oak believes that CD-ROM drives will also fuel a demand for audio devices; the company is planning a new version of its Mozart sound chip in a 100-pin package to target motherboards, for example.

Despite the advent of digital signal processing platforms such as IBM's Mwave, Mr. Tsang said there will still be a need for dedicated sound engines such as the Mozart device. He said much of the available software titles are based on libraries developed with FM synthesizers, for example. "It will be a slow transition," he said, "there will a combination of DSP, dedicated sound engine and mixer."

The Mozart device was developed with Media Chip, now owned by Opti, but Oak developed about 60 percent of the I/O interface and retains marketing and development rights. Europe-based M,usic Semiconductor, meanwhile, has licensed Oak's color-DAC technology.

At Comdex Fall, Oak announced its 64-bit GUI accelerlator, the OTI-64107, which supports the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) local bus. The device, also called the Spitfire, is sampling now and supports a point-to-point video interface. However, Oak is also revviong up the OTI-64109, which will use the VESa Media Channel and add a live video port. Longer range, the company is planning to integrate the 64109 and its local bus VGA controller.

With the emergence of MPEG-based compression/decompression on the multimedia scene, Oak is attempting to evolve its product line while still leveraging its core expertise. The company's only compression product thus far has been the OTI-95C71 Video Compression/Expansion Processor, an image processor targeting fac machines, copiers and printers.

Oak, though, is now planning an MPEG-based device in Q4 that targets both add-in cards and motherboards. The develoment effort is being led by Wen Hsu, Oak's director of engineering for compression and engineering products, one of the founding engineers at C-Cube Microsystems. With its expertise in graphics and bus interfaces, OAK is seeking to develop a device that improves video display output.