Press Releases for Europe 

London, 24th June, 2008 — Renesas Technology Europe today announced the SH-MobileUL2 (product name: SH7366) in the SH-Mobile*¹ Series of application processors for mobile phones. Designed for popularly priced mobile phones incorporating multimedia-processing functions, the SH-MobileUL2 delivers an enhanced cost-performance ratio. Sample shipments will begin in September 2008.

Like the existing SH-Mobile products that support terrestrial digital broadcasts, the SH-MobileUL2 incorporates a VPU (Video Processing Unit) high-performance video processing IP that supports the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (referred to below as H.264) moving image compression standard used in Japanese ISDB-T*² terrestrial digital broadcasting. It delivers high-performance video processing with low power consumption. The SH-MobileUL2 also adds on-chip dedicated video processing memory that boosts the video processing performance by approximately 30%, and achieves 30 fps (frames per second) encoding (recording) and decoding (playback) performance at D1*³ size (720 × 480 pixels), up from the VGA (640 × 480 pixels) definition supported by its predecessor.
This IP supports MPEG-4 encoding/decoding and VC-1*⁴decoding as well as H.264, enabling the SH-MobileUL2 to handle a variety of moving image applications such as video e-mail, video phones, and camcorder-style video clips. In addition, it can support digital broadcasting systems used outside Japan, such as DVB-H*⁵ in Europe and DMB*⁶ in South Korea.

The SH-MobileUL2 also integrates USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) Host/Function support and a D/A converter for TV output on-chip. This contributes to a reduced system cost by minimising the total number of parts required. It also simplifies the system design and makes it possible to realize more compact handsets.

The device uses a 284-pin BGA package measuring 8 mm × 10 mm. It can be paired with a single SiP (System in Package) external memory device containing either 128 Mbits or 256 Mbits of DDR1 (Double-Data-Rate 1) mobile RAM. This contributes to further system compactness and reduces the current consumption during memory accesses.

The SH-MobileUL2 is built around the SH4AL-DSP CPU core, which delivers high processing performance of 478 MIPS at the maximum operating frequency of 266 MHz, and is capable of running many different types of applications at high speed. The device also includes a camera interface for direct connection of a 5-megapixel camera module. This allows high-speed reading of large-volume image data from a high-resolution camera and makes possible a variety of display features. Examples include the electronic zoom display of images, and a superimposed image display employing on-screen display (OSD) or hardware cursor (HWC) functionality.

A variety of other on-chip peripheral functions that are suited to mobile phone systems are also provided, including an LCD controller supporting TFT colour LCD panels, an SD memory card*⁷ interface, a CE-ATA hard disk interface for mobile phones, and a sound interface.

Notes

1. SH-Mobile (SuperH™ Mobile Application Processor): An exclusive Renesas Technology processor for mobile phone systems that is connected to a baseband processor and performs dedicated processing for multimedia applications using audio and video. SuperH is a trademark of Renesas Technology Corp.
2. ISDB-T (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial): A terrestrial digital broadcasting standard developed in Japan. Broadcasting for mobile devices such as mobile phones uses only one of the 13 ISDB-T segments, and is therefore known as one-segment (or OneSeg) broadcasting.
3. D1: One among the video signal standards (D1 to D5) that use the D-terminal. D1 is an interlaced video signal 720 × 480 pixels in size. D-terminal is a connector terminal standard for analog video signals. Interlacing is a video scanning method in which the odd-numbered horizontal lines are scanned first, followed by the even-numbered lines. The combination of odd and even lines composes the picture.
4. VC-1: A video compression standard established by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers).
5. DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast for Handhelds): A mobile device version of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standard developed in Europe.
6. DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting): A digital TV broadcasting standard for mobile devices developed in South Korea. There are two versions: Terrestrial DMB (T-DMB) and Satellite DMB (S-DMB).
7. The SD memory card is a small memory card whose specification was originally formulated by 3C (Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, and SanDisk Corporation) and has been progressively extended by the SDA (SD Card Association).
   It is necessary to obtain an SD card license in order to use the SD memory card interface in a product.

Other product names, company names, or brands mentioned are the property of their respective owners.