Designed in Surrey, ZiiLabs has introduced the first 1080p Hi-profile (Blu-ray quality) media processor for handhelds.
Called ZMS-08, it offers H.264 1080p video playback, 720p video conferencing, 1080p 24frame/s encode, OpenGL ES 2.0 at 1Gpixel/s, and a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 with 256K L2 cache for application acceleration.
Made with a 64 processing element array on TSMC's 65nm process, the device offers 31Gflop/s computation - three times that of its 24 element 90nm ZMS-06 predecessor.
An integrated HDMI controller means a device with this chip can feed 1080p video to a suitable TV for display.
Power is half that of the previous chip, CEO Hock Leow told Electronics Weekly, and, for example, the new device can decode a 720p stream using under 200mW.
Application targets include handheld players, video conferencing, media hubs, point of service kiosks, digital signage and netbooks.
With its Cortex-A8, in this last application the chip could handle all the media and application processing required in a Linux netbook. "If you look at Atom today trying to play back HD, you get a bunch of frame drops," said Leow. "The ZMS-08 capabilities and peripheral integration, such as dual USB controllers and HDMI, are blurring the boundary between the capabilities of the traditional PC and connected device."
Particularly for digital signs, the device has four video interfaces. "Three for displays and one camera to look at the crowd to monitorise," said Leow. "Or one customer we are talking to wants four cameras in a car - two on the sides, one on the front and one on the back."
The chip has hardware to accelerate Adobe Flash playback, and provision for 'hardware compositing' to lay graphics over images.
The 64 32bit processors are arranged in eight identical clusters. "Two clusters can do VGA video encode, and it takes six for 1080p Hi Profile decode," said Leow.
To save power, clusters can operate at different frequencies.
Libraries, called through an API, are offered for functions including FFT, FIR filters, and inverse cosine transforms. "In future we are looking at compilers," said Leow.
Support for Linux-based Android and the firm's own Plaszma operating systems is available.
Audio processing comes from ZiiLabs' X-Fi package which includes surround sound for headphones, stereo up-mix to surround sound, acoustic echo cancellation and microphone beam forming.
Packaging is 13x13mm 424pin FBGA, and volume is scheduled for the 1st quarter of 2010.
Several hardware development kits are available including the iPhone-like Egg.