The hottest innovative embedded technology helps p

Innovative embedded technology helps portable consumer electronics to a higher level

the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games has ushered in another round of rapid development in the increasingly saturated portable consumer electronics market. With the improvement of people's material life, simple photography and audio/video appreciation can no longer meet the needs of the public. How to break through the technical bottleneck and bring more high-quality and rich experience to consumers, so as to win market opportunities, is the most concerned topic of terminal equipment manufacturers

as we all know, for portable consumer electronics, high-quality video display effect, product differentiation and longer battery life are the goals that terminal equipment manufacturers have been pursuing in recent years. Starting from these three points, this paper will analyze the latest semiconductor technology development of portable consumer electronics applications that began with the infiltration of appropriate resins (such as PA, PP, ABS and PEEK)

MPEG4 no longer dominates the world, and the video format "hundred schools of thought contend"

the Olympic Games is an opportunity to develop high-definition video, which has reached a consensus in the industry. Therefore, in such a good situation today, the introduction of portable consumer electronics with high-quality video display effect has also become a top priority for terminal equipment manufacturers. Consumers are no longer satisfied with simply playing MPEG4 format. Flv, real and RMVB are all popular video formats nowadays. These formats can not only be downloaded directly from the Internet, but also have rich content sources. Processor manufacturers for portable applications also deeply understand the importance of this, and have increased their efforts to develop a variety of processor products that support a variety of video formats and have high-quality display effects

as early as at the IIC 2007 (Shenzhen) exhibition, Patriot launched a portable media player called "MP5". The reason why patriot called this player product MP5 is that it solves a technical bottleneck of MP4: it supports the playback of streaming media formats of real companies such as rm/rmvb. The breakthrough of this technical bottleneck should be attributed to Freescale's 31 product. 31 has been widely used in the design of media players and other products since its launch more than a year ago. From the original Toshiba gigabeat, to Microsoft's blockbuster Zune, and now patriot's MP5, 31 has gradually shown its technical connotation to people. The 31 processor is based on ARM11 platform and adopts Freescale's smart speed enhancement technology, which can maximize the effective cycle/instruction (ECPI) and establish a new benchmark for mobile entertainment solutions with low power consumption/performance ratio. The processor supports MPEG-4, h.263 encoding and decoding, with a CPU of 266MHz and a system of 133MHz. It provides a 16/18 color LCD controller and supports VGA. Real's rm/rmvb and other streaming media formats have the advantages of small size, high definition and rich film sources. However, for a long time, supporting the playback of real format has been the technical bottleneck of portable media players. Under the 31 platform, portable media players have finally achieved this breakthrough

sigmtel also launched a multimedia processor stmp3700 that supports multiple video formats in June 2007. According to yeguohua, marketing director of the company in Asia, this portable multimedia solution can play MPEG-4 simplified video files for more than six hours at a speed of 30 frames per second with only a small 400mah lithium battery. STMP 3700 product series can not only support MPEG-4 (including DivX and XviD support), H.264 and 30 FPS QVGA WM sensitivity V and other formats to achieve smooth and stable video playback, but also support Microsoft PlaysForSure 2.2x and Vista versions. This product series can also provide the broadest range of NAND flash solutions on the market, and will continue to add new flash technologies. In addition, simat also provides a complete system, which can help customers shorten the development cycle and launch new products to the market more quickly and economically. At present, many well-known OEM and ODM manufacturers in China, such as anmaixin, lanmo, fuxingda, Shenzhen tianpengsheng electronics, are cooperating with simat on stmp3700 product technology

differentiation becomes an eternal theme, and wireless technology adds points to terminal devices

at present, there are a wide variety of portable consumer electronic devices on the market, which are dazzling. In order not to let products such as function, intelligence, PDA and PMP repeat the mistakes of MP3 market chaos and manufacturers' big price war, many terminal equipment manufacturers start with product differentiation to ensure the competitiveness of bamboo powder products in the early heating stage. However, with the gradual integration of portable consumer electronics functions, more and more functions are integrated in terminal devices, and it is becoming more and more difficult to seek "differentiation". However, in 2007, after Microsoft launched Zune player with Wi Fi function, and apple reportedly will also launch a new iPod with Wi Fi function, all terminal equipment manufacturers began to seek to use wireless technology to increase the competitiveness of their products. In addition to Wi Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and other technologies have also become the target of many terminal manufacturers

embedded semiconductor manufacturers with a keen sense of smell have long expected this change, and have launched related semiconductor products. Dr. Wu songru, general manager of CSR China, said that the company's bluecore technology for Bluetooth and Unifi technology for Wi Fi are ideal choices for, notebook computers and portable multimedia devices. Among them, CSR's bluecore series single-chip Bluetooth IC is industry-leading in terms of size, radio performance and power consumption. Bluecore 6, released at the beginning of this year, is the sixth generation bluecore of CSR. Its power consumption is reduced by 40% compared with the previous products, and ADPCM speech coding function is improved. CSR is also the only company that integrates a high-performance 64mips digital signal processor (DSP) into its Bluetooth silicon. Bluecore5 multimedia has a powerful embedded DSP architecture that allows consumers to add high-performance audio or voice improvement software to improve the performance and functionality of their final design. In addition to the functions provided by CSR's own DSP, CSR also embeds FM broadcasting functions into some low-cost ROM chips, which are specially oriented to users. CSR's Unifi series single-chip Wi Fi (802.11a/b/c and 802.11b/g versions) is specially designed for portable devices to use wireless connection methods other than Bluetooth. Unifi 1-portable (802.11b/g) adopts the same design concept as bluecore. It is the Wi Fi solution with the lowest power consumption in the market, and its size is only 5.8x6.4mm, which can be easily integrated into smaller battery powered products. At the same time, CSR company is also developing global positioning system (GPS) technology for. According to the introduction, CSR's GPS technology can be applied to mass embedded mobile products such as low and medium end, intelligent and PND

power management and low-power design work together, "draining" every Coulomb charge

battery life is a key consideration in portable consumer electronics design, which is closely related to the power consumption of the device system itself. Battery life not only determines the actual experience of consumers, but also relates to the integration of device functions. Generally speaking, the minimum requirement is to charge for 24 hours at a time. However, at present, many semiconductor technologies can help terminal equipment far exceed this basic requirement. There are two ways to achieve this technological breakthrough: one is to improve the performance of the power management chip. Such as national semiconductor (NSC), linear, Texas Instruments (TI), on semiconductor, Maxim and other companies' latest high-quality power management technologies. The other is the excellent low-power design of the processor chip itself

in terms of power management chips, take the PowerWise technology of national semiconductor of the United States as an example. This technology innovatively uses the closed-loop voltage control system of advanced voltage scaling (AVS), which uses an on-chip sensor to determine the lowest acceptable power supply voltage, so it can greatly reduce power consumption, and can also compensate for temperature and process deviations and the accuracy deviation of voltage regulator, The voltage is significantly reduced, so as to achieve the best power efficiency, and the maximum power saving is 70%. In order to facilitate customers to carry out efficient power system design, National Semiconductor also launched a simulation test tool on WEBENCH in 1999. According to Martin kidell, vice president and managing director of national semiconductor Asia Pacific, the company has recently added several new highlights to the WEBENCH design tool. For example, the newly added "performance button" allows users to easily optimize the design of their power supply system, and when users choose a design scheme, they can specify whether efficiency or scheme volume is the decisive factor. In addition, WEBENCH has added new tools that can support led design. As long as customers choose the LED configuration, WEBENCH can select the most suitable LED driver for customers, so that customers can immediately conduct simulation tests

in addition to the above simple power management technology, semiconductor manufacturers have also made great efforts in low-power processor design technology. For example, Blackfin adsp-bf52x, recently launched by Analog Devices Corporation (ADI), utilizes an internal voltage regulator and improves the manufacturing process to enhance Blackfin's dynamic power management function and adjust the on-chip power consumption to match the MIPs required to perform the function. Bf52x series provides developers with various functional options to match MIPs, power consumption and price with their special applications

in fact, in addition to the two methods described above, semiconductor manufacturers are also seeking to use integrated methods to reduce system power consumption. Austrian microelectronics adopts the method of integrating audio and power management devices to reduce power consumption and board area. The company is the only semiconductor manufacturer that integrates high current switching dc/dc converters and high-voltage circuits with high-precision high-performance audio DAC, ADC and amplifier on a single IC. So far, more than 100million such integrated products have been applied to various mobile devices. Taking its as3543 as an example, the chip is flexible and ensures the lubrication between bearings; In order to ensure the sharpness of the cutting tool, highly integrated audio and power management devices, including low-power stereo audio DAC and ADC with line audio output and input, microphone input, headphone amplifier with direct drive performance, lithium ion and other general-purpose battery chargers, high-efficiency dc/dc buck power converter, LDO, ultra-low power RTC, battery switch, high-voltage backlight power supply unit and other functions. The dc/dc converter supports dynamic nuclear power management technology, which helps to improve the efficiency of various current loads

nowadays, integrating more functions is also the tireless goal of portable consumer electronics manufacturers. Music, video, navigation, camera, Bluetooth, FM radio, calendar, Internet browser and other functions make people's life more rich and convenient. However, while catching up with market demand, terminal equipment manufacturers also need to pay attention to the development of some potential risks, such as changes in the supply of NAND flash memory, and should make inventory adjustments in time to avoid chain attacks on the portable consumer electronics industry chain