Philips, ESS roll multimedia chips

Electronic News, Nov 20, 1995 by Andrew Maclellan

Las Vegas--Multimedia enthusiasts banking on a spate of new technology announcements here at Fall COMDEX hit the jackpot last week as several OEMs including Philips Semiconductors and ESS Technology rolled out chips targeting this rapidly growing market segment.

Philips Semiconductors' developments include components for a "Smart-Radio" with text capability for PCs, a new CD-ROM chip and its first game board since entering the 3-D fray with the acquisition of Western Digital's Multimedia Products Unit (EN, Oct. 2).

According to Philips, its three-component multimedia Smart-Radio FM receiver module frees broadcasting stations to transmit both high-quality stereo radio and digital text and data directly to computer displays. The new Radio (Broadcast) Data System (R(B)DS) Radio PC card, using Philips' OM5604 component, is designed specifically for multimedia PCs and offers listeners a wide selection of displayed text and broadcast data. Features include radio station ID, music format, artist's name and song title as well as traffic bulletins, weather, emergency messages and the ability to pre-set up to 99 radio channel selections.

Philips, based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has gained the support of the Electronic Industries Association (EIA). Earlier this year the association backed the R(B)DS standard by launching a $1 million campaign to install hardware decoders in the top 25 radio markets in the U.S. The EIA plans to equip several hundred radio stations with the R(B)DS signal, opening audio/visual display broadcast access to 85 percent of the American radio listening audience.

At the heart of the OM5604 module is the TEA5757H self-tuned radio receiver which increases tuning speed, searches for strong signals, fine-tunes and self-adjusts for superior reception levels. The OM5604 module also includes the PCF8574T bus converter--with I2C-bus control and three I/O lines for additional control functions--and the TDA1308T line amplifier with two line outputs.

Philips provides OEMs with reference software to simplify the complete radio design task. A plug-in card displays and controls all functions common to high-specification systems. All additional components are available from existing Philips product ranges.

The Smart-Radio module components are available immediately in 1,000-unit quantities. The OM5604 FM multimedia module is priced at $24, the CCR921 R(B)DS decoder is priced at $3.45 and the SAA6579 lists for $3.40.

In other product announcements, Philips has rolled out what it is touting as the industry's most highly integrated CD-ROM interface chips, the SAA7385 and SAA7388. According to the company, the chips incorporate a host of functions, saving board space and upping speed capability eight times over competing technology.

Included on the SAA7385 are the SCSI-2 controller with 10-megabytes/second transfer rate, a 33MHz 80C32 microcontroller with additional control lines for a single micro CD-ROM system, and all other CD-ROM interface functions, including third layer error correction and sub-code handling. The SCSI-2 interface includes the SCSI Automatic Configuration (SCAM) function with Plug-and-Play, a choice of 256-kilobit or 1-megabit DRAM buffer memory and up to 16-megabytes of single block transfer capability.

The SAA7388's integrated CD-ROM ATAPI functions are similar to the SAA7385 except the SAA7388 uses an external microcontroller. Both are available now in 10,000-unit quantities. The SAA7385 is priced at $18; the SAA7388 at $10.

Retaining Western Digital's Paradise service team, Philips also introduced the Paradise Tasmania 3-D gaming board which operates with any x486 or Pentium-based computer.

Priced at $250, the Tasmania's design is completely compatible with all existing VGA graphics accelerators, according to Philips. Tasmania 3-D incorporates the Yamaha RPA2 rendering polygon accelerator to provide hardware texture mapping, Gouraud shading and Z-buffering. The board comes with either PCI- or VL-bus interfaces with 2MB of DRAM and will begin shipping this month.

Meanwhile, Fremont, Calif.-based ESS Technology unveiled three chips for the PC audio market; among them the ES938, an audio effects chip which provides interactive 3-D audio from existing stereo and multimedia software using only two conventional speakers. The company also unveiled the ES690 Wavetable Music Synthesizer chip and the ES1868 audio chip for PCs and multi-function add-in cards.

Utilizing Spatializer Audio Laboratories' Spatializer technology, the ES938 chip manipulates stereo and monophonic sources with enhanced sound imaging to create a 3-D sound field effect which is then coordinated with on-screen video action. According to ESS, the ES938 utilizes the left and right panning information already present in the latest computer games to create real-time audio events which interactively change position in response to changes in the game player's viewpoint. Variable space control allows spatial adjustments to suit each user's taste. The ES938 connects directly through the MPU-401, MIDI serial control interface to several of ESS' AudioDrive family of audio chips which enables digital control of all effects.