Date: 08/01/2012

100-core media processor designed exclusively for Android 4.0 tablets

ZiiLABS has unveiled its new 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor optimized for Android OS. The 100 processor-cores of ZMS-40 includes 96 of ZiiLABS' StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs.

In ZMS-40, ZiiLABS said it has doubled the number of StemCell Media processors compared to the previous ZMS-20 to deliver twice the peak media performance, while running the larger array at lower clock speeds to achieve the same performance leads to greater energy efficiency and a reduction in power consumption of up to 50 percent.

By packing the high performance at low power his multi-core media processor is designed to handle hig definition media-contenta in mobile devices such as tablet computer. Thiss includes ultra-high-resolution H.264 HP decoding of up to 3840x1080 for true 1080p 3D stereo, a rich and interactive desktop browsing experience, 2560x1600 (WQXGA) display resolution support, higher-quality video encoding and immersive OpenGL ES graphics and future support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

ZiiLABS explains the up-and-coming HEVC standard (also known as H.265), besides other qualitative benefits, can also increase data compression ratio by up to 2X as compared to H.264. These technology wizardries are achieved by requiring many more times the computational complexity. HEVC claims to target the next generation Hi-Def TV market which can support scalable resolutions from 320x240 to 1080p with improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color and dynamic range, and all the way up to an incredible resolution of 7680x4320. Being fully programmable and with their massive parallelism, the 96 cores of StemCell Media processors can easily handle the onerous computational requirements of this new CODEC and support higher resolutions that are beyond today's display systems, claims ZiiLABS.

The key highlights of this ZMS-40 media processor includes:

Supports Android 4.0 implementation.
Features APIs to enable dual independent displays. For an example, a user could be browsing the web for information while watching an HD video on the TV all at the same time.
Also features support for Text-to-Speech and Voice Recognition

"The tablet market for China is going to explode, especially with China's recent emphasis on digital textbooks, digital school bags and digital classrooms for all of its students." said Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and CEO of Creative Technology Ltd.

The ZiiLABS ZMS-40 is sampling to select customers based on the JAGUAR tablets running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).