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Fifth Generation PortalPlayer SoC Triples MP3 Player Battery Life
Parallel Processing Architecture Dramatically Reduces Clock
Rates During Typical Operation While Delivering High
on-Demand Peak Performance
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—March 3, 2005—
PortalPlayer, Inc. (Nasdaq:PLAY), a leading supplier of advanced
system-on-chip, firmware and software solutions for the MP3 personal
media player market, today announced its next-generation PP5022
System-on-Chip (SoC). The PP5022 is designed to meet next generation
requirements for feature-rich hard-disk drive-based personal media
players.
The PP5022 is the fifth generation personal media player
integrated circuit from PortalPlayer. With a range of architectural
improvements from the previous PP5020, the new chip, starting to ship
now, offers more than a three times reduction in SoC power consumption
and enabling up to triple the battery life. PortalPlayer's innovative
parallel processing architecture combined with optimized firmware
allows for lower clock rates and core voltages, leading to
dramatically lower SoC power levels versus a comparable uniprocessor
system. Decoding a typical 160 kilobits per second (Kbps) MP3 stream
now requires less than 25mW.
"The PP5022 chip is a very sophisticated product that enables a
rich user experience with substantially longer playback time," said
Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a research firm covering
the electronics market. "PortalPlayer is continuing to bring new
innovations to the audio market such as a tripling battery life for
MP3 players, integrating USB 2.0 Host Controller and Transceiver into
the media processor and providing transparent compatibility with
peripheral devices such as digital still cameras and printers."
"Our goal with the PP5022 was to offer a solution that balances
lowest operating power while continuing to increase system
performance," said Michael Maia, vice president of sales and marketing
at PortalPlayer. "We achieved this goal and will continue to deliver
the lowest operational power during playback and encoding of rich
media content--the PP5022 is our most innovative SoC to date,
resulting in best-in-class battery life in hard drive jukebox
systems."
PortalPlayer PP5022 System-on-Chip
Power - Power consumption of the system was markedly reduced by
using a 0.13 micron CMOS process with 1.0 to 1.2V core power, dynamic
load balancing, clock gating, and support for 1.8V Low Voltage
synchronous DRAM. Efficient parallel processing reduces the required
clock rates driving typical operation down and further enabling lower
voltage operation. Together with pseudo synchronous blocks within the
device that improves clock distribution by dynamically turning off
inactive modules on a per clock cycle basis, these improvements lead
to dramatic power reductions. The PortalPlayer Firmware Development
Kit (FDK) will support these features as well as highly optimized
split decoders to further lower clock rates on MP3, AAC and WMA
decodes. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) is supported enabling the
device to operate over a wide voltage range to match needed
performance to the specific task.
Performance - The PP5022 features a highly parallel media
processing architecture that integrates dual 32-bit ARM7 central
processing units (CPUs) with zero wait state four-port 128 kilobytes
iRAM and six direct memory access (DMA) channels connected through
multiple high-speed internal buses. The PortalPlayer SoC maximizes
total processing throughput per clock cycle, which leads to lower
clock rates in standard operation than a comparable ARM9-based SoC.
Additionally, having multiple internal buses provides higher data
throughput, while avoiding the performance bottlenecks of competing
systems. The PP5022 architecture enables a high on-demand peak
performance without sacrificing ultra low power for mobile devices in
standard operation than comparative DSP, VLIW, SIMD, or single RISC
microprocessor solutions.
The high performance media processor engine design supports up to
sixteen concurrent tasks for maximizing system throughput and
responsiveness to end-user commands. Dedicated high-performance
interfaces reduce latencies and improve download speeds and
performance of database engines when a large number of music files and
photos are being managed.
System Input/Outputs - The PP5022 is offered in a 261-pin 12mm
x12mm TFBGA package, providing added flexibility through a wide
selection of fully integrated high performance system input/outputs
including: the analog physical layer and USB 2.0 controller for
high-speed Device, Host and On-the-Go support; FireWire Link Layer
integration; dedicated ATA-66 enhanced IDE bus supporting up to four
devices; 4-bit SDMMC controller; consumer CD I2S port; 8/16-bit
expansion IO; B/SIR infrared; TWC 3-wire controller; 4 channel, 8-bit
ADC; 4 channel, 8-bit PWM/FM; up to 48 GPIOs; dedicated 16-bit memory
controller for two banks of 2.5V or 1.8V SDRAM; and digital video
input for direct connection of image sensors or mobile video services
such as DVB-H.
Display - The PP5022 display subsystem meets the demands of
today's diverse display technologies in personal media players ranging
from mobile high-resolution TFT and STN flat panels to NTSC and PAL
TVs. The "Dual View" display enables navigating the handheld players'
LCD to preview and select music, photos and video while playing a
different image concurrently on the TV. Display support includes:
8-bit parallel bridge interface; 4-bpp mono serial or parallel
controller for direct interface panels; 18-bpp color TFT or CSTN
controller; CCIR-601/656 TV out; hardware color space conversion and
4-bpp hardware overlay support.
About PortalPlayer
PortalPlayer, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a
fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets
comprehensive platform solutions, including System-on-Chips, firmware
and software for manufacturers of feature-rich, hard disk drive and
flash-based personal media players.
PortalPlayer and the PortalPlayer logo are trademarks of
PortalPlayer, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are
the property of their respective owners.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS:
Except for the historical information contained herein, the
matters set forth in this press release, including, but not limited
to, statements regarding the anticipated features, performance and
benefits of the PP5022 System-on-Chip, are forward-looking statements
within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. Words such as "offers," "leading to," "enables," "continuing
to," "expect," "believes," "anticipates," "will," "designed to" and
similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking
statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance
and reported results should not be considered as an indication of
future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those
discussed in these forward-looking statements as a result of risks and
uncertainties, including, among others, the market for hard disk
drive-based personal media players, market acceptance of the PP5022
System-on-Chip, manufacturing and supply risks, PortalPlayer's ability
to keep pace with rapid technological change, the semiconductor
industry, international operations and PortalPlayer's ability to
compete, and other risks and uncertainties detailed in PortalPlayer's
Prospectus dated November 18, 2004 as filed with the SEC, and from
time to time in PortalPlayer's SEC filings. These forward-looking
statements speak only as of the date hereof. PortalPlayer does not
undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.
Contact:
A&R Partners for PortalPlayer
Greg Wood, 650-762-2838
gwood@arpartners.com
or
Kristine Mozes, 781-652-8875 (Investor Relations)
kristine@mozescomm.com
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