Chips
Tomato LSI
- Location: Seoul, South Korea
- Founded 1999
- Uses South Korean foundry DongbuAnam Semiconductor
- Presently only making display controllers without digital video decompression or compression
Nazomi
Nazomi ARM in a lawsuit over Java processing technology in 2002. Now the Nazomi web site has
disappeared. The status or fate of Nazomi, its team, and its technology is unclear.
The author would appreciate any
information.
Mobilygen
- Location: Santa Clara, CA
- Mobilygen is primarily a fabless chip company, but also licenses some of its
technology as one or more IP cores. Mobilygen uses hardware multithreading
techniques and has data-driven media engines and efficient memory controllers.
- Products:
MG1264 H.264 (AVC) simultaneous encoder/decoder chip supporting VGA at 30 fps. with
two-channel AAC audio encode/decode. Targeted at power sensitive digital still camera
(DSC), camcorder, and cell phone systems. Priced at $10 per chip.
MobilEye
- Location: The Netherlands
- Strictly focused on automotive vision for safety and performance
- Products:
EyeQ dual- ARM946E based, peripheral-rich chip with accelerator engines specialized for
automotive visual tasks such as filtering, object classification, object tracking, and
lane detection.
Siano Mobile Silicon
- Location: Netanya, Israel
- Products:
SMS1000 chip set including the SMS1001 quad-band CMOS RF tuner chip and the SMS1002
demodulator for DVB-H, DVB-T, DAB (including Enhanced Packet Mode), and T-DMB. The chipset
consumes 25 mW for DVB-H operation. The chipset price should come down to $10 by 2007.
- Customers:
- Alps Electric
- Compal Communications
- Innoxius
- Vendors:
- Siano licensed an ARC core for use in the
SMS1002 demodulator chip
Bitboys
- Location: Finland
- Makes/sells low-power programmable processor chips for vector graphics
- Targeting wireless phones and other hand-held, battery-operated devices
Nethra
- Location: Cupertino, CA
- Founded 2003
- focused on camera phone image / video capture chip design
- Products:
NI-2060 54 million pixels / second, image processor with a 8, 10, or 12 bit CCD or CMOS
image sensor interface at up to 3 megapixels, scaling, 64 KB boot flash
NI-2050 unpackaged bare die with the features of the NI-2060 and image stabilization,
low-light enhancement, red-eye reduction, and support for up the 16 MB external SDRAM
NI-2070 with the features of the NI-2050, but in a package
NI-2080 with the features of the NI-2070, but with 8MB of SDRAM in a stacked die, pin
compatible with the 2060
NI-2090 with the features of the NI-2080, but with only 2MB of SDRAM, pin compatible with
the 2060 and 2080
- All NI-20x0 products use an ARM7TDMI host processor
- hardwired hardware acceleration for some algorithms
C & S Technology
NuCORE Technology
- Primarily sells chips for digital still cameras
Mtekvision
- Location: Seoul, South Korea
- Founded: 1999
- Primarily sells chips for digital still cameras
- Products:
MV3320 2.0 mega pixel JPEG encoder, JPEG decoder, and MP3/AAC decoder and display controller.
MV3018 VGA JPEG encoder and display controller
MV319 1.3 megapixel JPEG encoder and display controller
MV3391.3 megapixel JPEG encoder and MJPEG decoder and display controller
MV317 JPEG encoder and display controller
MV309 VGA JPEG encoder and display controller
MV3118 VGA JPEG encoder and display controller
MV305 VGA JPEG encoder and display controller
MV313 JPEG encoder and display controller
MV9313 programmable image signal processor
MV8601 5 megapixel JPEG, motion JPEG, and MPEG-4 encoder, decoder, and display controller
based on an ARM9 processor, using the technology acquired from the Atsana acquisition.
MV8602 5 megapixel JPEG, motion JPEG, H.263, and MPEG-4 encoder, decoder, and display
controller based on a 32-bit RISC processor, using the technology acquired from the Atsana
acquisition.
- Acquisitions:
- Low-power massively parallel processor MPEG-4, MJPEG, and JPEG 2000 processing
chip company and ARM9 licensee Atsana Semiconductor (Ottawa, Canada).
Acquired in 2005 for $1.35M.
MSilicon Electronics
- Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
- Founded: 2003
- 22 employees
Mobilic
- Location: Taipei, Taiwan
- Founded: 2003
- 8 engineers
- multimedia chips for mobile phones
- Products:
MP803, MP810, MP811 camera controllers and JPEG encoder/decoder chips
MP831 1.3 megapixel multimedia processor based on a 200 MHz ARM926EJ-S processor core,
capable of MP3 encoding and simultaneous MPEG-4 encoding and decoding VGA at 15 fps or CIF
at 30 fps. ARM, USB host, and PHY IP licensed, all else developed internally. Includes 2D
graphics acceleration, LCD display, TV, ethernet, SD/MMC card, and USB 1.1 interfaces.
Includes stacked DRAM and supports CCD and CMOS image sensors. Manufactured in SMIC 0.18
micron technology. Priced at $10.
MP833 3 megapixel multimedia processor based on a 200 MHz ARM926EJ-S processor core,
capable of MP3 encoding and simultaneous MPEG-4 encoding and decoding VGA at 15 fps or CIF
at 30 fps. ARM, USB host, and PHY IP licensed, all else developed internally. Includes 2D
graphics acceleration, LCD display, TV, ethernet, SD/MMC card, and USB 1.1 interfaces.
Includes stacked DRAM and supports CCD and CMOS image sensors. Manufactured in SMIC 0.18
micron technology. Priced at $10.
MP835 5 megapixel multimedia processor based on a 200 MHz ARM926EJ-S processor core,
capable of MP3 encoding and simultaneous MPEG-4 encoding and decoding VGA at 15 fps or CIF
at 30 fps. ARM, USB host, and PHY IP licensed, all else developed internally. Includes 2D
graphics acceleration, LCD display, TV, ethernet, SD/MMC card, and USB 1.1 interfaces.
Includes stacked DRAM and supports CCD and CMOS image sensors. Manufactured in SMIC 0.18
micron technology. Priced at $10.
MP730 chips same as the MP830 but with NOR flash, SDRAM and 10/100 ethernet interfaces for
less power sensitive devices.
- Competitors:
Chipnuts Technology
- Location: Shanghai, China
- Founded: 2003
- > 200 employees
- Products:
C625 single-chip multimedia coprocessor. Has JPEG and motion JPEG decode and a LCD driver.
Also has audio. Consumes low power.
- Vendors:
- Chipnuts has licensed ARM7 and ARM9 cores from ARM
- Chipnuts manufactures chips at SMIC
- Chipnuts licensed the ZSP500 core from the
LSI Logic/ZSP
3Plus1 Technology
- Location: Saratoga, CA
- Founded: 2003
- Developing "CoolProcessor" low power multimedia processor chips for mobile devices
using a heterogenous multiprocessing architecture with a general-purpose processor and a
DSP processor core.
NeoMagic
- Founded: 1993
- sells MiMagic line of application processor chips for handheld systems including:
- MiMagic 6+ with support for the reception of ISDB-T, DMB, and DVB-H digital video
broadcast signals. Based on a 200MHz ARM926EJ processor IP core.
- Vendors:
- NeoMagic chips include ARM processor IP cores
- Partners:
MediaWorks Integrated Systems
- Location: Irvine, CA
- Founded: 2003
- The MediaWorks Integrated Systems web site has disappeared and those involved in the
company have been tight-lipped about its status / fate.
- MediaWorks is/was in the business of building custom application specific systems-on-chip
for their customers.
- Products:
MW301 camcorder chip. Encodes at up to 720x480 at 30fps in MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-1, MPEG-2,
DivX, H.264, and WMV formats with I, P, and B frames (bitrate, motion search algorithm, and
GOP configuration unspecified). Fully C programmable parallel processor architecture.
Camcorder, digital still camera (DSC), and security camera software available.
- Vendors:
- MediaWorks uses the Tensilica Xtensa
processor in the MW301 and MediaFlex platform and will use Xtensa LX in future products.
Newport Media
- Location: Lake Forest, CA
- Founded: 2005
- Products:
- Sundance DVB-H, DMB, ISDB-T, and FLO receiver chip
MediaPhy
- Location: San Jose, CA
- working on DVB-H and H.264 Baseline decoder chip
Telegent Systems
- Location: Sunnyvale, CA
- Founded: 2004
- Products:
- TLG1100 TV receiver chip performs full video processing from antenna to display,
supporing NTSC and PAL.
- TLG1130 TV receiver chip for mobile TV in handsets performs full video processing from
antenna to display, supporing DVB-H, DVB-T, NTSC and PAL.
NemoChip
