Xilinx Flagship Spartan FPGA Platform at the Heart of ASTRI Dynamic Backlight Control Technology for Today's Flat Panel LCD Televisions

Dynamic LED backlighting provides LCD TVs with sharper picture quality and overall lower power consumption than TVs of the previous generations. ASTRI estimates that more than three million LCD TVs with dynamic backlight control will be sold worldwide by the end of 2009. The institute expects the market will skyrocket over the next half-dozen years, and plans to help its customers to command the lion's share of this emerging market. Since 2004, the majority of leading LCD TV manufacturers have employed dynamic backlight control techniques in their products; however, the technology and customer requirements continue to evolve. New entrants to the LCD TV market seek to carve out a competitive advantage over dominant players by getting to market faster with better image quality and lower power consumption.

Xilinx Spartan-3 Generation FPGAs allow ASTRI's dynamic LED backlight control technology to become more flexible in meeting different customers' differentiation requirements, said Dr. C.J. Tsai, Director, Display System Division, LED Programme, ASTRI. In the LCD television market, where the race to develop new products is intense, faster time-to-market is key to business success. Xilinx FPGAs offered us greater flexibility to customize our application with lower system costs, and significantly reduced our product development time. The extensive support provided by Xilinx and the strong technical support offered by its distribution sales team Avnet Memec China were the other factors that prompted us to choose Xilinx FPGAs over competing solutions.

Our Spartan series FPGAs offer an unmatched combination of low power, high performance and low cost, which has made them the number one choice for LCD TV manufacturers around the world for multiple generations, added Clement Cheung, Marketing and Application Director for Xilinx Asia Pacific. As the worldwide PLD industry leader, Xilinx and Avnet are proud to partner with ASTRI to bring innovative technology to the quickly evolving flat panel display market.