Music to their ears: Philips Semiconductors announces single-chip multi-format audio solutions

Taipei, Taiwan - 4 June, 2001 - Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI), announces at Computex (4-8 June) the launch of a new family of highly integrated solid state audio devices. Sharing technology with the company's Nexperia™ digital audio platform (DAP), the new SAA775x family will enable equipment manufacturers to create low-cost, future-proof designs with the advanced functionality and flexibility needed for today's increasingly popular Internet audio products.

Already a world leader in silicon system solutions for consumer appliances, Philips Semiconductors, with its new SAA775x family, is able to provide complete system solutions for a range of portable and in-home audio devices. These include personal MP3 audio players, car radio systems, portable CD players, flash memory cards, Internet radio and simple jukebox applications.

Hans Fleurkens, international product manager for Audio DSP at Philips Semiconductors, said, "This new family of devices means manufacturers can now develop products for all music play-back standards using technical designs based on the same chip family. Manufacturers can design sophisticated and differentiated products quickly and cheaply, so reaching greater numbers of increasingly diverse customers than ever before. Our products will be music to their ears."

With low power consumption and housed in LF BGA packages, measuring just 15mm by 15mm, the devices are perfectly suited to the needs of portable music players and car audio systems. Able to support a range of stereo audio decompression algorithms, including MP3, AAC and Microsoft WMA, the SAA7750 chip's programmable DSP architecture enables it to become the basis of MP3, CD and SSA (flash memory) products. Other sound features include volume, treble, bass and support for ultrabass, infrapitch and incredible headphone. The inclusion of a fully featured audio codec enables it to be combined seamlessly with Philips Semiconductors radio ICs.

On-board flash memory ensures the device can be continually upgraded in the field, enabling it to keep pace with the development of audio compression formats. Field upgradability is particularly valuable in car radio applications, where software upgrades are preferable to equipment replacement. By including support for Smartmedia, Multi Media Card (MMC) and optional support for Secure Digital (SD) memory cards the device provides the opportunity to make sophisticated yet low-cost single-chip products. There is also support for communications via a USB1.1 interface.

While offering similar features to the SAA7750, the SAA7751 is targeted primarily at field upgradable CD players. And with embedded ROM, rather than embedded flash memory, the SAA7753 is a lower cost MP3 solution. Both are well suited to in-car audio systems. The family is completed with the SAA7752, which is cost optimized for CD systems.

The new device family shares some design concepts with Philips Semiconductors' Nexperia DAP, which will also comprise the company's R.E.A.L. (Reconfigurable Embedded Architecture Low-power/Low-cost) DSP core, and RISC CPU cores licensed from ARM. Nexperia DAP is a highly flexible platform architecture that gains the maximum benefit from re-use of both hardware and software and, with ease of software programmability, enables short time-to-market development of next-generation future-proofed audio systems.

The SAA7750 is available now in sample form and volume shipping begins in Q4, 2001.

Philips Semiconductors, which had annual revenues of approximately US$6.3 billion in 2000, designs and manufactures semiconductors and silicon systems platforms. Philips Semiconductors is spearheading the emerging field of systems on silicon solutions with the innovative Nexperia™ platform and VLSI Velocity™ tool set. The company's Sea-of-IP™ design methodology allows plug and play intellectual property blocks for easily customizable products. The company is a leader in communications, consumer, PC peripherals and automotive semiconductors, which are key applications for convergence in end-user products. Philips Semiconductors is headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and has operations throughout the world. For more information:
www.semiconductors.philips.com.