Personal Media Player/Portable Navigation Device

The market for Personal Media Players (PMPs) & Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) have seen an explosive growth in the last few years. The PMP/PND market has evolved from very basic navigation and MP3 playback functionality to adopting the latest features of the consumer electronics market, including multimedia and wireless functionality. In fact most PMPs and PNDs look like Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). PMP/PND designers need to create new and differentiated products by adding the features that consumers demand while simultaneously addressing the market needs of rapid development time, and lowest Bill of Materials (BOM) cost.

The PMP/PND markets adoption of multimedia-rich content - particularly, video and Mobile TV - as well as different wireless technologies has led to unique challenges in storage, feature integration, battery life and technology convergence. At an architectural level, this trend results in more and more peripherals to be connected to the application processors that run the operating system (OS) and application software. Unfortunately, application processors have a predefined set of interfaces and typically cannot be modified as fast as the market requirements change. Usage of the systems for playing movies and the Internet has led to challenges in battery life of the device.

To solve this dilemma, QuickLogic has developed a broad variety of host controllers around the most common storage, networking, video and other high speed peripheral interface technologies used in PMPs. These include VEE™ technology, DPO, USB 2.0 OTG with PHY, SD/SDIO/MMC, IDE, NAND/Managed NAND & High Speed UARTs.

Challenges

• Increased storage needs due to high digital content, particularly video and Mobile TV
• Demand for multiple high speed wireless interfaces for high speed download of digital content , email and web browsing, and better user experience with services provided by companies such as exchange of songs and video
• Poor image quality and requirement for increasing backlight reduce battery life

Solution

• QuickLogic supports a broad spectrum of storage choices including CE-ATA, IDE, SD/SDHC/MMC cards and Managed NAND with booting capability
• QuickLogic provides both Hi-Speed USB 2.0, SDIO 2.0 and MPEG-TS for high speed data interface for wired and wireless connectivity. QuickLogic's SPIDA technology allows high speed download of digital content
• VEE™ technology and DPO to improve picture quality and save battery life by lowering backlight requirements when watching video and Mobile TV