Oxford Semiconductor Announces FireWire Audio Chip That Creates High Quality Sound Systems
LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Jan. 5, 2004—
A dedicated FireWire audio controller IC will be
launched and demonstrated by Oxford Semiconductor at Macworld 2004.
Compatible with FireWire (IEEE1394A) and FireWire 800 (IEEE1394B)
connections, the OXFW970 chip provides eight digital audio output
channels.
Enabling the creation of high quality surround sound systems for
both Mac and PC platforms, the OXFW970 uses the bandwidth and quality
of service attributes of FireWire to overcome the limitations of
alternative USB multi-channel audio solutions and removes the need to
install separate sound cards.
The FireWire audio controller can receive and process 32-bit audio
data sampled at up to 48kHz at a streaming speed of up to
100Mbytes/sec. FireWire's power carrying capability also means that
the speaker configuration does not require the use of external power
supplies.
Via an external 1394 PHY, the OXFW970 accepts isochronous audio
packets encoded using the IEC61883-6 transmission protocol, initiates
buffering and sample rate control before passing them to the multiple
serial audio interfaces and conventional DAC output stage.
A highly integrated device presented in a 100-pin TQFP package,
the FireWire audio controller IC uses a combination of its on-board
ARM7TDMI processor and high performance buffer manager to implement
the 1394 transaction layer. Its link controller complies with
IEEE1394-1995, 1394a and 1394b specifications.
The OXFW970 supports remote programming of 512kbits of on-board
flash memory over the FireWire bus using firmware and flash
programming ultilities supplied by Oxford Semiconductor. Integral UART
and JTAG ports facilitate debugging. The chip offers eight
programmable GPIO pins for the addition of application specific
functionality.
Reference: OS0068
Macworld 2004
Booth 1643
Contact:
Oxford Semiconductor
Andy Thorne, +44 (0)1235 824 900
contact@oxsemi.com
www.oxsemi.com
or
Publitek Limited
Rob Davies, +44 (0)1225 470 000
rob.davies@publitek.com
