On the NMS7041, the 3D graphics engine includes both 3D triangle setup and a 3D rendering pipeline. That lets the engine deliver a 50 million-pixel/s fill rate and display over 1 million triangles/s. The engine also provides double buffering to prevent image tearing, and a 16-bit Z-buffer for depth processing. Other engine features allow bilinear and trilinear filtering, flat and Gouraud shading, perspective-correct texture mapping, MIP mapping, source alpha blending, vertex fogging, specular highlighting, texture blending, and color dithering. The engine handles 4- or 8-bit parallelized and nonparallelized textures, and it includes a streaming texture cache.
Both chips provide the eye-catching display output via a flexible and high-performance LCD controller. A CRT output with integrated digital-to-analog converters drives external monitors or LCD projectors. Plus, a TV output delivers a 640- by 480-pixel image with a pixel depth of 16 bits (RGB 5:6:5). When used with an external TV encoder chip, the output can deliver NTSC, PAL, or SECAM video.
The LCD support lets designers add LCD screens that have from 120- by 160-pixel resolutions and monochrome color depth (1-bit/pixel) to 1024 by 768 pixels with 24-bit/pixel color depth. Designers also can program the LCD controller for nonstandard resolutions and aspect ratios. And, the controller can be configured so the images can be turned in 90° increments.
On the input side, the LCD controller includes an analog touch-screen interface with on-chip analog-to-digital converters. Adding some external logic, the touch-screen inputs can be adapted to handle either stylus or finger touch as the control or data-entry interface.
Part of the multimedia support on the chips is a multichannel audio subsystem. Both 2D and 3D chips have an audio controller that delivers eight audio output channels for mono or stereo playback, and one record channel input. An eight-channel ADPCM decoder handles compressed audio playback, and an eight-channel digital mixer/sample-rate converter provides flexible output capabilities. The audio block handles sample rates from 8 to 48 kHz. It packs an interface to AC-97-compatible codecs and a MIDI interface that supports off-chip wavetable synthesis.
The rest of the logic on the MiMagic chips provides a wide variety of support functions to designers. A trio of PLLs and dual oscillators work with power-management logic to enable three system operating modes—normal, standby, and suspend (with only a 32-kHz oscillator running). An integrated interrupt controller offers six external interrupt inputs, many internal interrupt sources, and a nonmaskable interrupt input. Moreover, both chips house a host of peripheral I/O support functions, such as a three-port USB host controller (USB 1.1 compliant) with integrated transceivers, multiple 32-bit timers plus a real-time clock, dual RS-232 serial ports, dual analog joystick interfaces, and two dozen general-purpose I/O pins.
Designers also built in dual high-speed synchronous extension buses to permit these chips to tie into larger systems. The external bus interfaces support the use of memory cartridges and the ability to write code that can execute in place (directly from the cartridge, rather than requiring the contents of the cartridge to be downloaded, then executed from the system's internal memory). This reduces the system's internal memory requirement and allows hardware expansion cartridges to include self-contained software drivers.
Because the MiMagic chips are based on the MIPS 4Kc core, any MIPS software development tool can be used to develop and debug the application software. The graphics engine will support various operating systems. For Linux for instance, Trolltech of Oslo, Norway (www.trolltech.com), offers a full graphical-user interface and 2D tool suite. For 3D graphics, NeoMagic also has its own API called RSGL (real simple graphics library) and is developing a fully compliant WinCE API and library.
The company has a hardware development platform that includes either MiMagic chip and implements almost all options, including the analog joysticks, plug-in expansion cards, music synthesis, and USB ports. The first operating-system port will be for BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks, San Jose, Calif. (www.lynuxworks.com).
Price & Availability
The MiMagic system solutions will be sampled to key customers this quarter with commercial samples available in the fourth quarter. In 100-piece sample quantities, the NMS7040 and NMS7041 will sell for $35 and $50 each, respectively. Initial samples will be housed in 329-contact BGAs, but production units will be housed in 324-contact BGAs. Available in the fall, development boards will cost $1000 each.
NeoMagic Corp., 3250 Jay St., Santa Clara, CA 95054; Jason Chiang, (408) 988-7020, www.neomagic.com.
On the NMS7041, the 3D graphics engine includes both 3D triangle setup and a 3D rendering pipeline. That lets the engine deliver a 50 million-pixel/s fill rate and display over 1 million triangles/s. The engine also provides double buffering to prevent image tearing, and a 16-bit Z-buffer for depth processing. Other engine features allow bilinear and trilinear filtering, flat and Gouraud shading, perspective-correct texture mapping, MIP mapping, source alpha blending, vertex fogging, specular highlighting, texture blending, and color dithering. The engine handles 4- or 8-bit parallelized and nonparallelized textures, and it includes a streaming texture cache.
Both chips provide the eye-catching display output via a flexible and high-performance LCD controller. A CRT output with integrated digital-to-analog converters drives external monitors or LCD projectors. Plus, a TV output delivers a 640- by 480-pixel image with a pixel depth of 16 bits (RGB 5:6:5). When used with an external TV encoder chip, the output can deliver NTSC, PAL, or SECAM video.
The LCD support lets designers add LCD screens that have from 120- by 160-pixel resolutions and monochrome color depth (1-bit/pixel) to 1024 by 768 pixels with 24-bit/pixel color depth. Designers also can program the LCD controller for nonstandard resolutions and aspect ratios. And, the controller can be configured so the images can be turned in 90° increments.
On the input side, the LCD controller includes an analog touch-screen interface with on-chip analog-to-digital converters. Adding some external logic, the touch-screen inputs can be adapted to handle either stylus or finger touch as the control or data-entry interface.
Part of the multimedia support on the chips is a multichannel audio subsystem. Both 2D and 3D chips have an audio controller that delivers eight audio output channels for mono or stereo playback, and one record channel input. An eight-channel ADPCM decoder handles compressed audio playback, and an eight-channel digital mixer/sample-rate converter provides flexible output capabilities. The audio block handles sample rates from 8 to 48 kHz. It packs an interface to AC-97-compatible codecs and a MIDI interface that supports off-chip wavetable synthesis.
The rest of the logic on the MiMagic chips provides a wide variety of support functions to designers. A trio of PLLs and dual oscillators work with power-management logic to enable three system operating modes—normal, standby, and suspend (with only a 32-kHz oscillator running). An integrated interrupt controller offers six external interrupt inputs, many internal interrupt sources, and a nonmaskable interrupt input. Moreover, both chips house a host of peripheral I/O support functions, such as a three-port USB host controller (USB 1.1 compliant) with integrated transceivers, multiple 32-bit timers plus a real-time clock, dual RS-232 serial ports, dual analog joystick interfaces, and two dozen general-purpose I/O pins.
Designers also built in dual high-speed synchronous extension buses to permit these chips to tie into larger systems. The external bus interfaces support the use of memory cartridges and the ability to write code that can execute in place (directly from the cartridge, rather than requiring the contents of the cartridge to be downloaded, then executed from the system's internal memory). This reduces the system's internal memory requirement and allows hardware expansion cartridges to include self-contained software drivers.
Because the MiMagic chips are based on the MIPS 4Kc core, any MIPS software development tool can be used to develop and debug the application software. The graphics engine will support various operating systems. For Linux for instance, Trolltech of Oslo, Norway (www.trolltech.com), offers a full graphical-user interface and 2D tool suite. For 3D graphics, NeoMagic also has its own API called RSGL (real simple graphics library) and is developing a fully compliant WinCE API and library.
The company has a hardware development platform that includes either MiMagic chip and implements almost all options, including the analog joysticks, plug-in expansion cards, music synthesis, and USB ports. The first operating-system port will be for BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks, San Jose, Calif. (www.lynuxworks.com).
Price & Availability
The MiMagic system solutions will be sampled to key customers this quarter with commercial samples available in the fourth quarter. In 100-piece sample quantities, the NMS7040 and NMS7041 will sell for $35 and $50 each, respectively. Initial samples will be housed in 329-contact BGAs, but production units will be housed in 324-contact BGAs. Available in the fall, development boards will cost $1000 each.
NeoMagic Corp., 3250 Jay St., Santa Clara, CA 95054; Jason Chiang, (408) 988-7020, www.neomagic.com.