NEC upgrades EMMA for portable media gadgets to handle 3D

To address the growing market of media players, NEC Electronics has announced the availability of a new system-on-chips (SoCs) in the EMMA Mobile series, which can handle high-definition (HD) content and 3D graphics by consuming less power.

The new EMMA Mobile/EV SoCs are optimized for the portable device market including portable multi-media players and mobile tablets. This series has ARM's high-end Cortex-A9 CPU core and a HD-capable audio-visual (A/V) engine for decoding a multitude of digital video and audio formats. Two versions of the device are available: EMMA Mobile/EV1 with one embedded Cortex-A9 CPU core and EMMA Mobile/EV2 with two embedded Cortex-A9 CPU cores.

NEC in partnership with WindRiver has developed a Linux based software development kit for designing portable entertainment electronic devices.

The new EMMA Mobile/EV SoCs offer the following features:

Supports audio/video formats such as H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4, VC-1 content up to Full-HD (1920 × 1080 pixels) on portable devices.
Integrates a POWERVR SGX 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies to realize 3D processing at 14.7 megapolygons per second and pixel-filtrate performance of 500 megapixels per second sustained under realistic operating conditions.

Adopts technologies such as automatic clock control, on-chip power-switch and quick-recovery (Note 1) to reduce consumption by up to 30 percent compared to EMMA Mobile 1.
Supports mobile DDR and DDR2 memory

NEC Electronics considers EMMA Mobile/EV as a strategic product in the field of portable audio-visual devices and plans to market it actively.

Price: Each $50
Availability: Mass volumes by Dec 2010