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NEC, KWest partner on turnkey design for PC tablets
Santa Clara, Calif. — NEC Electronics and KWest have introduced a turnkey design for portable consumer products based on NEC’s EMMA Mobile 1 system on chip (SoC), together with KWest’s Connected Media Framework. The turnkey design targets portable applications linked to network routers and 3G networks to receive and play back data. The design also can be used to develop remote control systems with extensive functionality.
The turnkey design is based on NEC’s multimedia processor that incorporates all the functionality required for playback of multimedia data on a single chip. The SoC includes the high-end ARM1176JZF-S CPU core, a high-performance DSP core for playing back digital video and audio files, and a dedicated image processor. WLAN 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, optional 3G functionality and an infrared function are added to the turnkey design’s options for receiving and transmitting data. Other features include NAND and eMMC flash and a USB 2.0 and a secure-data (SD) high-capacity slot.
The turnkey design also provides a 7-inch touch display (800 x 480 pixels) with resistive or capacitive touch technology, a brightness sensor and a motion sensor. Other hardware options can be integrated as required, says NEC.
The basic software provided with the turnkey design is a Linux base port with drivers for EMMA Mobile 1 and the pre-integrated peripheral ICs. Two different frameworks are available: Qt 4.6 and Android 2.1. The Qt port interfaces to an optimized Gstreamer framework, developed by KWest that uses all the video and audio accelerator functions of Emma Mobile 1 to provide a highly efficient design for multimedia applications.
The Qt port also uses the Emma Mobile 1 hardware graphics accelerator engine and can access multimedia functions provided from the DSP and the integrated video accelerator. The Android port uses an optimized OpenCORE implementation that, like the Gstreamer framework, uses the internal accelerators of EMMA Mobile 1.
The software is completed by the Connected Media Framework (CoMeT) from KWest (Dusseldorf, Germany). CoMeT ensures simple integration of portable media such as SD/MMC cards, iPods, or USB mass memory and gives access to online storage facilities like WebDAV or UpnP servers, says NEC. CoMeT also contains a media database that can scan and index all media, making the metadata available to applications via a SQL interface.
CoMeT provides access to Internet services such as podcasts, web radio, YouTube or personalized audio streams (e.g., Aupeo and Last.fm), and a link to local media with Internet content. It also features a media-rendering engine that can handle a variety of formats and protocols to provide applications with a simple interface for audio and video playback, says NEC.
A number of standard applications, including web browser, e-mail client, web radio, photo viewer and multimedia player, are available, along with a widget engine for linking external applications.
NEC Electronics will exhibit the turnkey design at the Mobile World Congress 2010 (MWC 2010), in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 15-18.
Availability: Samples of the EMMA Mobile 1 turnkey design will be available from KWest starting March 2010. Hardware and software specifications are also available immediately from both companies.
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