High-Definition Multimedia Interface Digital IP Receiver And Transmitter Core Unveiled

Sunnyvale, CA - Silicon Image, Inc. extended its industry leadership when it unveiled the first High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) digital IP (intellectual property) receiver and transmitter core with a companion physical layer (PHY) chip.

The new Silicon Image offerings extend the most comprehensive set of HDMI solutions available on the market, giving IC designers and OEMs flexibility to select the HDMI and PHY components that best suit their time-to-market, packaging, cost, integration and other design needs. Silicon Image is the leader in HDMI technology, with comprehensive solutions ranging from HDMI Tx and Rx (transmitter and receiver) standalone chips, to integrated HDMI digital and PHY IP, to HDMI Tx and Rx digital IP plus a companion PHY chip.

HDMI has quickly become the de facto interface standard for high-definition consumer electronics products such as HDTV, DVD, set-top boxes and A/V receivers. Chip designers for these consumer electronics products seek HDMI integration options as they begin to integrate HDMI into their designs. Silicon Image aids this process by offering the broadest portfolio of HDMI solutions on the market.

Silicon Image's HDMI Tx and Rx Digital Logic, announced today, is a soft RTL (register transfer logic) core that is independent of foundry and process geometries, which SoC designers can integrate with their own logic and interface circuitry to connect to the external HDMI PHY. The HDMI digital logic core offers customers an affordable yet integrated HDMI solution that they can quickly take to their foundry partner to manufacture.

The company's Sil9002 HDMI Tx PHY, also announced today, is an affordable PHY transmitter chip designed as a companion to Silicon Image's HDMI Tx digital IP. Fully compliant with HDMI 1.1 and HDMI 1.2, the Sil9002 is designed to be integrated into a customer's system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. Silicon Image is also developing a companion PHY receiver chip, the Sil9003, with availability in the second quarter of 2006; pricing and packaging details for the Sil9003 will be announced at that time.

"Producing a standalone HDMI PHY with associated digital core IP enables our customers to choose the level of HDMI integration in their chip designs," said Eric Almgren, vice president of Intellectual Property Licensing at Silicon Image. "We will continue to expand our portfolio of HDMI technology -- ranging from chips to IP -- to enable our customers to build solutions that meet their functionality, time-to-market and cost requirements."

These new offerings will enable customers to more quickly integrate HDMI IP, remain process independent, and keep high-speed analog circuitry out of their system-on-a-chip designs, while helping to reduce the bill-of-material (BOM) costs for OEMs.

Renesas Technology Corp., one of Japan's leading consumer electronics chip manufacturers, has licensed Silicon Image's HDMI Tx and Rx IP. Because Silicon Image has HDMI compliance-verified, silicon-proven IP in tens of millions of devices shipped, companies like Renesas are attracted to the low-risk of integrating Silicon Image's IP. "Renesas Technology is developing a family of integrated chips that require the HDMI interface," said Kazutami Arimoto, deputy general manager of Renesas's System Core Technology Division in Japan. "We licensed Silicon Image's HDMI IP because their solution is silicon-proven."

Sigma Designs Inc. has licensed Silicon Image's HDMI digital transmitter IP. "Our key customers helped drive the integration of HDMI to reduce the bill of materials and achieve an airtight security system with HDCP encryption directly on the chip," said Ken Lowe, VP of strategic marketing Sigma Designs, Inc. "Naturally we chose to work with Silicon Image, as they've established the de facto standard for HDMI implementation and a clean, fast route to silicon."

SOURCE: Silicon Image, Inc.