MediaQ tackles mobile

MediaQ tackles mobile
Paris - Fabless chip company MediaQ Inc. today will introduce a family of ARM-based application processors intended to enhance multimedia features on PDAs and smart phones. The approach could trigger David-and-Goliath clashes between MediaQ, whose focus so far has been peripheral graphics controllers and applications coprocessors for portable devices, and such competitors such as Texas Instruments Inc., Intel Corp. and STMicroelectronics.

MediaQ (Santa Clara, Calif.) built the Katana family on a new architecture that integrates hardware-based multimedia acceleration engines with embedded memory. The goal is to "run applications faster but to consume less power," said marketing director Venkat Punpambekar.

Under the new MediaQore framework used for Katana, MediaQ eschews use of a DSP, increased bus frequency or CPU processing power to handle the multimedia-intensive tasks expected in new handsets. Rather, the framework's dedicated hardware engines let the CPU run at very low clock speeds while minimizing traffic on the memory bus, Punpambekar said.

The Katana application processors are potential replacements for CPUs, DSPs and CPU/DSP combinations already designed into multimedia-centric handsets. But Punpambekar said the family is targeted at "the mid- to slightly high-end market," which he said is not Intel's primary aim for the Xscale architecture or Texas Instruments' for its Omap.

"MediaQ's best strategy is exactly what it is doing now," said Max Baron, principal analyst and senior editor of the Microprocessor Report at In-Stat/MDR. "It must avoid its products' being replaced by chips that offer both acceleration and CPU in one package."

"Katana can be a good choice for products that are not targeted at the leading edge but instead are focused on delivering good value," said Todd Kort, principal analyst at Gartner Dataquest.

The first three Katana entries are based on the industry-standard ARM922T and embedded memory.

The MQ9000, integrating a CCIR656-compliant camera interface and such connectivity options as USB and Secure Digital I/O, provides hardware acceleration engines for 64-bit 2-D graphics, MPEG-4 postprocessing and Java. The MQ9100 adds real-time JPEG compression in hardware for cameras that can stream VGA images. And the MQ9150 adds hardware JPEG compression for megapixel camera images.

Set to ship
The MQ9000, priced at $14 each in volumes of 10,000, is available now. Engineering samples, yet to be priced, of the MQ9100 and MQ9150 will ship respectively in July and September.

Beyond the engines featured in the first three application processors, the MediaQore framework will provide an MPEG-4 encode capability and a 3-D engine. MediaQ would not say when those accelerators would appear in new processors.

All of the framework's hardware accelerators are software-compatible across MediaQ's product lines, including its previous-generation multimedia platform controllers and application coprocessors. A hardware abstraction layer makes the Katana processors operating system-agnostic, Punpambekar said. The family currently supports PalmOS, PocketPC, micronITRON and Linux and will support Nokia's Series 60 platform, he said. The company has already signed up for Symbian OS, which forms the basis of Nokia's Series 60 platform for smart phones.

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