Epson Electronics America today announced the addition of the S1D13A05 to the company's family of LCD Controllers/Companion chips targeted for handhelds and embedded applications.
The S1D13A05 combines an accelerated LCD graphics controller with a USB controller and an embedded 256KB SRAM display buffer.
For the advanced multimedia applications found on handhelds, the S1D13A05 supports fast display updates and high bandwidth needs with its 32-bit internal data path, write buffer and 2D hardware acceleration engine. As the third chip in Epson's family of embedded memory companion chips, the S1D13A05 is targeted at higher resolution displays, like 320 x 320 at color depths up to 65,536 colors.
"The S1D13A05 further builds out Epson's family of companion chips to meet the growing display needs of the handheld and mobile device market," said Roy daSilva, executive director, Integrated Circuit business unit, Epson Electronics America.
"Epson continues to develop products that further benefit our customers with cost, power savings and increased performance. The introduction of the S1D13A05 offers designers a greater array of controllers from which customers can tailor their design based upon resolution, memory and performance needs."
"The evolution of handhelds and mobile communication devices is confounding in that it's happening both faster and slower than anyone anticipated. In the cell phone industry, there is already proven demand for a variety of devices in Japan, which was much faster than expected. For example, there are currently 27 million I-Mode subscribers in Japan.
"The rest of the world is catching up, but there is huge interest in Europe as the first wave of WAP phones demonstrates. In addition, interest in the graphics abilities of PDAs for viewing still pictures and video has also grown as these devices are proving to be multifunctional products for communications and Internet access.
"Epson has been among the first companies to recognize the need, and be able to meet the demands for advanced graphics in small devices from PDAs to cell phones and this product extends their reach in these markets," said Kathleen Maher, director of Computer Technology Analysis at Jon Peddie Associates.
To achieve cost and power savings for designers, the LCD controller supports all standard panel and thin film transistor (TFT) types, thereby eliminating the need for an external timing control IC. The chip's integrated hardware acceleration engine enables quick screen drawing functions without large power consumption due to its low operation voltage requirements and software-initiated power save mode.
The S1D13A05 is designed to interface with a wide variety of microprocessors including the Hitachi SH-4/SH-3 and Motorola M68xxx and Dragonball series. The chip's built-in USB 1.1 client provides designers a flexible display solution for various applications, operating systems and CPU types.
This flexibility makes the S1D13A05 ideal for a number of applications such as handhelds built using the widely popular Palm operating system (OS). The S1D13A0x family continues to incorporate Epson's patented SwivelView(TM) feature which allows 90(degree), 180(degree) or 270(degree) hardware rotation of the display memory for products requiring a rotated display image transparent to the software applications while greatly increasing overall system performance.
Availability
Epson's S1D13A05 embedded memory companion chip is currently available in a 121-pin PFBGA package. For product and sales information on the complete S1D13A0x line of embedded companion chips, visit www.eea.epson.com.
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