System IP to decode New digital music format Ogg Vorbis is ready for a market from FineArch, Inc.

Achieved competitive 12MHz operation, targeting portable music player

July 15th 2003 - FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www.vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today?fs portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.

Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.

This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.

"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.

"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.

This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.