Article Tools

• 

CSR and austriamicrosystems have announced that CSR’s BlueCore Bluetooth technology has been selected by austriamicrosystems for its new Mobile Entertainment platform. The AS3525 and AS3527 core devices of the platform are both high-performance single-chip-systems targeting enhanced MP3 players with multimedia aimed at the OEM market.

By adopting CSR’s BlueCore4-ROM in the designs, austriamicrosystems will be able to offer its customers a development platform that takes advantage of CSR’s market-leading expertise in wireless technologies as well as low-power and small form factor hardware.

austriamicrosystems’ versatile and highly integrated ARM9 SoC in the AS3525 and AS3527 delivers more than 200 MIPS of processing power and allows the implementation of an MP3 player with only 50 mW total power consumption. It delivers video playback to LCD and OLED screens at up to 30 frames per second (fps) and up to QCIF+ resolution, while streaming crystal-clear audio via its independent Bluetooth headphone and line outputs.

Its system firmware is Microsoft PlaysForSure V2.0 compliant and supports MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG audio, JPEG, GIF and BMP photos as well as MPEG4 and Microsoft WMV Mobile Video contents. The platform has been tested by the National Software Testing Lab (NSTL) to be interoperable with Windows Media Player 11 and with the new Windows Vista Operating System. It also includes innovative technologies of lighting management for the generation of colourful effects synchronized with playback of music in order to increase the listener experience.

austriamicrosystems has also ported CSR’s BlueCore host software (BCHS) onto its host ARM9 processor to run A2DP and AVRCP profiles. These profiles enable consumers to listen wirelessly to their music on Bluetooth stereo headphones and through Bluetooth-enabled home media entertainment systems. BCHS provides a complete system software solution for embedded BlueCore applications. BCHS ensures that existing processing power already in the multimedia player can be used for Bluetooth, thus providing the most cost-effective way to implement Bluetooth in today’s consumer products.

Roberto Simmarano, senior director of marketing communications at austriamicrosystems commented, “austriamicrosystems’ reference platforms enable device manufacturers to easily develop high-performance mobile entertainment products as well as incorporate essential features like Bluetooth connectivity. Our customers expect the very best technologies with minimal time-to-market constraints and this is why we decided to work with the leading provider of Bluetooth technology. austriamicrosystems’ partnership with CSR is invaluable to bringing our customers complete single-chip player solutions.”

Tracy Hopkins, VP, consumer strategic business unit at CSR commented, “As device manufacturers are looking to integrate more functionality into MP3 players and PMPs, the desire for integrated Bluetooth connectivity has increased. Consumers increasingly want to share music and the ability to stream the same audio track to two Bluetooth headsets from a single player is very desirable thus negating the need to share headphones.

austriamicrosystems’ Mobile Entertainment reference designs with integrated BlueCore technology offers OEMs a cost-effective solution for quickly and easily integrating Bluetooth connectivity into existing and new product platforms.” Hopkins added, “CSR will continue to support its partners throughout the development process and work closely in order to help them achieve the very best product offerings and reference designs.”