Imagination Technologies announces revolutionary ENSIGMA UCCP320

Programmable radio demodulation and WiFi platform supports worldwide terrestrial cable and satellite digital television

Yokohama, Japan -- November 18, 2009 -- Imagination Technologies, the leading multimedia chip technologies company, announces ENSIGMA UCCP320, which uniquely enables the broadest range of Wi-Fi connectivity, digital radio, mobile TV and TV standards of any communications and connectivity core. The revolutionary UCCP320 redefines the cost-effectiveness of integrating multiple programmable radios into high volume consumer products.

ENSIGMA UCCP320 is based on UCC Series3, the third generation of Imagination’s RPU (Radio Processing Unit) architecture, which delivers market-leading performance and ultra low power in a small silicon area, ideal for SoC integration.

UCCP320 builds on Imagination’s “Best of Both Worlds” approach to communications which combines multimode hardware for down conversion and error correction with a programmable SIMD complex vector processor for demodulation. This approach gives multi-standard support on a common configurable core – the UCC. In UCCP320 the UCC can be combined with any of Imagination’s META processor range to deliver a complete demodulation and connectivity platform.

By replacing not only multiple receivers but also Wi-Fi and other radios, UCCP320 sets the pace for connectivity in embedded devices. UCCP320 allows consumer and mobile products to be built on common hardware platform while reducing power, footprint, and Bill of Material (BoM) costs compared with using conventional solutions.

Since UCCP320 is available as an IP platform, chip manufacturers can not only produce advanced multi-standard communications baseband chipset solutions, but also now migrate communications functions onto next generation SoCs (systems on chip), confident that all possible Wi-Fi and other connectivity standards, as well as all TV, radio and mobile TV receiver requirements can be implemented with high performance and low power, regardless of region or market.

Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination says: “UCCP320 is far more than a communications solution – it is an opportunity for industry innovators to take the next step in systems integration by bringing all forms of communication on-chip.”

Traditional OEMs are used to extremely low cost baseband chipsets optimised for each individual standard, but the sheer number of standards for both receivers and internet and other forms of connectivity means this approach is increasingly not cost-effective. Nor indeed is it practical for many mobile form factors. While some silicon vendors are tackling this by producing ‘combo chips’, these are often little more than combinations of two or three separate chip designs on a single die whereas UCCP320 delivers a programmable and future-proof solution in a small silicon footprint.

Continues King-Smith: “We believe that UCCP320 offers a unique value proposition for OEMs as well as communications and SoC silicon vendors. It delivers a fully programmable and extensible solution that offers both an unrivalled breadth of supported standards – all delivering exceptionally high performance at extremely low power consumption - and the ability to future proof highly integrated next generation SoCs.”

The ENSIGMA RPU can be combined with Imagination’s META CPU (Central Processing Unit) and POWERVR GPU (Graphics and video Processing Unit) families of advanced SoC Processors to create complete single-chip solutions for a wide range of entertainment, communications and computing needs, or used with customers’ own IPs or other SoC designs to create exciting, highly differentiated next generatipn SoC solutions.

Concludes King-Smith: “Imagination’s vision for the future of SoCs tackles every aspect of SoC design from the lowest level up to applications level system design. Every one of our IP cores embraces this philosophy to create a unique, highly scalable roadmap for our partners”.

The UCCP320 platform is designed to support the ever increasing number of standards for communications in a proven, highly-efficient and extraordinarily flexible programmable solution. UCCP320 adds new support to the UCCP family for standards including  DVB T2, DVB-S2/S, worldwide cable (DVB-C / J.83B / ISDB-C) and GB20600 Chinese Digital Terrestrial TV. These formats extend the already broad range supported by the UCCP family, which already supports the 802.11a/b/g family of Wi-Fi standards, digital TV (ATSC (8VSB), Nordig Unified 2.0 DVB-T, full-seg ISDB-T), mobile TV (DVB-H, T-DMB, 1-seg ISDB-T) and digital radio (DAB, DAB+ and FM with RDS and 3-seg ISDB-T).

Other key features include support for diversity, execution of multiple simultaneous standards, and expansion bus options. Due to the small silicon area of UCCP320 cores, it is expected that an increasing number of partners will be integrating two or more UCCPs, further extending the system level flexibility of the platform.

The UCCP320 is also designed to support 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and 3.0 on UCCP320, as well as C-MMB, MediaFlo, DRM,  HD-Radio and other emerging communications and broadcast standards. Availability of these will be announced together with partners in due course as the ENSIGMA ecosystem continues to gain momentum.

Within the UCCP320 platform, UCC Series3’s programmable radio technology provides physical layer demodulation and modulation. The integrated 32-bit META processor performs system housekeeping, manages data-link processing for DVB-H and 802.11a/b/g, and distributes data using the platform’s own DMA controller.

The ENSIGMA UCCP320 IP platform is available for licensing now.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication silicon technologies – creates and licenses market-leading processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by strong array of software tools and drivers as well as extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets includemobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics.Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.