1998-11-16 , E/IC-1045/65
Product News From Philips Semiconductors

Five ICs integrated into one cuts power consumption to a third of rival designs

Philips Semiconductors, Europe's leading semiconductor company, has just added the SAA7113 to its extensive range of video processing ICs for multimedia PCs. This multi-standard video processor IC is so highly integrated that it enables a complete 9-bit video capture device to be accomodated on a PC motherboard or even a PCMCIA card. The IC's small footprint also enables it to be incorporated easily on graphics cards to provide video capture functionality at a significantly lower overall system cost. The SAA7113 has an advanced, low-noise, 9-bit front-end architecture with higher digitizing resolution than all other devices in its price range. The 9-bit analog to digital converters and a revolutionary, low-noise, internal differential architecture dramatically reduce noise levels in the video digitizing process.

Typical power consumption is less than 450mW and can be reduced to even lower levels by advanced power saving features that include power down and sleep modes for full PC-99 compliance. This is less than a third of the power consumption of many competing devices, making the SAA7113 ideal not only for desktop applications but also for notebook and PCMCIA card applications. This makes it the perfect companion chip for modern PCI or AGP graphics controllers and MPEG2 decoders, especially as it operates at 3.3V, simplifying board design by eliminating the need for additional voltage regulators. The SAA7113 accelerates teletext, closed caption, and Intercast applications by implementing its teletext data slicer in hardware rather than software. This cuts down the CPU load to a point at which video and data services can function together in real-time without affecting CPU performance.

The SAA7113 comes with Philips Semiconductors' quality WDM drivers for Windows 98 and Video HALiday capture drivers for Windows 95, which are compatible with most internet browsers such as Intel's Intercast Player, teletext browsers such as those from Medianet, and data services such as from WebTV for Windows and Wavephore, while being fully backwards compatible with the company's existing  SAA7112 and  SAA7111A video capture chips. These drivers deliver a seamless interface to modern AGP and PCI-based VGA controllers and provide a complete, multi-function, turn-key solution for videoconferencing, video editing, PC/TV, Intercast, and PC teletext applications. This package is further enhanced with a sample teletext application (PC Text Lite) to reduce development costs and time to market.

The SAA7113 is packaged in a 44 pin Quad Flat Pack (QFP) and only requires a handful of external discretes and a single external crystal for all video standards, i.e. PAL, SECAM and NTSC. It is available now in full production volumes.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world and the third largest supplier of discretes in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.