Toshiba's single chip, MPEG-4 codec prototype..............................
techweb.com
Toshiba Develops MPEG 4 Chip
(02/05/98; 3:39 p.m. EST)
Semiconductor Business News <Picture>Toshiba announced Wednesday that it has developed a prototype single-chip video encoder and decoder (codec), which is believed to be the industry's first integrated circuit (IC) to support the proposed MPEG 4 format for wireless systems.
Toshiba researchers are scheduled to present a technical paper on the video codec during this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.
Aimed at wireless communications applications, the MPEG 4 specification is being finalized by a joint committee of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). MPEG standards are drafted by the Moving Picture Experts Group, which is jointly organized by ISO and IEC.
By February 1999, an international standard for MPEG 4 is expected to be published. Toshiba's video codec is programmable, enabling the device to be modified as the standard evolves in the next year, according to the Japanese chip maker.
Toshiba claims its codec is the first IC to support video signal encoding and decoding in the MPEG 4 format. Just as important, the IC contains technology for low power consumption required in portable systems, Toshiba said.
The chip contains 3 million transistors on a 9-by-9-millimeter die. It is fabricated with a 0.3-micron, double-well, triple-level metal CMOS technology.
The video codec's power consumption has been lowered to 60 mW at 30 MHz operation, which is about 70 percent less than other IC designs, according to the Japanese chip company.
Toshiba also implemented an error-correction function to prevent image degradation that results from data communication errors. The prototype IC employs object-based coding of video images, which enables functions -- such as editing and processing of objects in a picture -- to be performed separately |
