Analysis
NEC Electronics and KWest Introduce EMMA Mobile 1 Turnkey Design for Multimedia Web Tablets and Advanced Remote Control Functionality
NEC Electronics and KWest today announced the availability of a turnkey design for
portable consumer products based on NEC Electronics’ EMMA Mobile 1 system on
chip (SoC). The turnkey design is the basis for devices that are linked to network routers and 3G networks to receive and play back data. At the same time, the turnkey design can be used to develop remote control systems with extensive functionality.
The turnkey design is based on EMMA Mobile 1, a multimedia processor that incorporates all the functional units required for playback of multimedia data on a single chip. The EMMA Mobile 1 chip includes the high-end ARM1176JZF-S™ CPU core, a high-performance DSP core for playing back digital video and audio files, and a dedicated image processor. WLAN 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, optional 3G functionality and an infrared function are added to the turnkey design’s options for receiving and transmitting data. NAND and eMMC flash are integrated as mass memory, as are USB 2.0 and a standard-definition (SD) high-capacity slot. The newly introduced turnkey design is completed by a 7-inch touch display with 800 x 480 pixels and resistive or capacitive touch technology, a brightness sensor and a motion sensor. Further hardware options can be integrated as required.
The basic software provided with the turnkey design is a Linux base port with drivers for EMMA Mobile 1 and the pre-integrated peripheral ICs. Two different frameworks are available: Qt 4.6 and Android 2.1. The Qt port interfaces to an optimized Gstreamer framework, developed by KWest that uses all the video and audio accelerator functions of Emma Mobile 1 to provide an ultra-efficient basis for multimedia applications. The Qt port also utilizes the Emma Mobile 1 hardware graphics accelerator engine and can access multimedia functions provided from the DSP and the integrated video accelerator. The Android port utilizes an optimized OpenCORE implementation that, like the Gstreamer framework, accesses the internal accelerators of EMMA Mobile 1.
The turnkey software is completed by KWest's Connected Media Framework (CoMeT). CoMeT ensures simple integration of portable media such as SD/MMC cards, iPods, or USB mass memory and gives access to online storage facilities like WebDAV or UpnP servers. CoMeT contains a powerful media database that can scan and index all media and make these metadata available to applications via an SQL interface. CoMeT not only provides quick and
easy access to Internet services such as podcasts, web radio, YouTube or personalized audio streams (e.g., Aupeo and Last.fm), but also provides a link to local media with Internet content, e.g., for finding similar recording artists.
Finally, CoMeT features a media-rendering engine that can handle a variety of formats and protocols to provide applications with a very simple interface for audio and video playback. A number of standard applications, including web browser, e-mail client, web radio, photo viewer and multimedia player, are available, as is a widget engine for linking external applications. CoMeT is available in the Qt and the Android ports, and KWest provides for both frameworks APIs and applications that take advantage of the CoMeT functionality.