(Hong Kong - 29 Sept 2006) Solomon Systech Limited, a world leader in advanced display technology and a Contributor Member in the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance, demonstrated its new SSD2802 MIPI master bridge chip at the 3rd 2006 MIPI Quarterly Meeting held last week in Montreal, Canada. The new SSD2802 is one of the world's first master bridge chips containing an interface compliant to MIPI specifications*. It is also the first product member of Solomon Systech's innovative display interface solutions that would help accelerating the adoption of application-rich mobile devices.

The demonstration (Figure 1) showed the SSD2802 connected to the bus of an application processor and receiving display data from the processor. It showed the capability of the SSD2802 driving via a serial bus, enabling a TFT LCD module with a MIPI compliant receiver, and displaying video content at a QVGA resolution of 30 frames per second. 

The SSD2802 provides seamless connectivity for displays in mobile devices, such as mobile phones, portable multimedia players, digital video recorders, etc. Mobile devices product companies will be able to design end products with more elegant form factors with the use of the SSD2802, which converts the commonly used MCU or RGB parallel display interface to a 4-line high-speed serial MIPI compliant interface. The SSD2802 is able to support display resolutions of up to half VGA at video speed and can support a main panel and a subpanel simultaneously. Furthermore, Solomon Systech’s SSD2802 adopts the physical layer of low-voltage differential signaling as defined by MIPI specifications*, which will be able to reduce the cost of connection cables and at the same time minimize EMI issues in continuous miniaturization of end products. 

The SSD2802 is versatile enough to interface to most baseband processors, application processors, or co-processors now deployed in most mobile products. The SSD2802 is able to operate in both High-Speed (HS) and Low-Power (LP) modes for data transmission to provide optimum power consumption and will consume ultra-low power in the idle state. It contains an on-chip PLL for clock generation and is packaged in a mini 5x5 mm BGA package.

Solomon Systech will be introducing complete solutions including matching LCD drivers, which will be introduced in the coming months.

Features

·          Supports MIPI Specification*

·          Transmission rates up to 200 Mbps. Maximum support for HVGA size panel at 60 fps

·          Supports MCU interface of 8/16/18 bits (6800 and 8080), RGB interface (16/18 bits) and SPI interface (8-bit 3-wire, 8-bit 4-wire, or 24-bit 3-wire)

·         Supports 16 and 18 bpp

·         Supports dual panel update (2 smart panels or 1 dumb panel with 1 smart panel)

·         Supports High-Speed (HS), Low-Power (LP) mode for data transmission

·         Supports Ultra-low power mode in idle state

·         Supports both command mode and video mode in MIPI DSI standard

·          Supports bi-directional data transfer (forward link in High-Speed and Low-Power modes and reverse link in Low-Power mode)

·          On-chip PLL; reference input clock frequency: 10-20 MHz

·          Power supply: 1.8V +/- 10% for internal circuit; 3.3V/1.8V +/- 10% for I/Os

·          Package: 64-pin BGA

Availability

Engineering samples of the SSD2802 and its supporting evaluation boards will be available in December 2006. Please visit www.solomon-systech.com, or contact our local sales office for more information.

Note: 
* MIPI Specification: DSI(v1.0), DCS(v.0.41) and D-PHY(v0.65)

The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance is a collaboration of mobile industry leaders with the objective to define and promote open standards for interfaces to mobile application processors. Through these open standards, the MIPI Alliance intends to speed deployment of new services to mobile users by establishing specifications for standard hardware and software interfaces to mobile application processors and encouraging the adoption of those standards throughout the industry value chain. The MIPI Alliance is intended to complement existing standards bodies with a focus on microprocessors, peripherals and software interfaces.

More information about MIPI Alliance may be obtained at www.mipi.org