Date: 12/10/2008

Express Logic and Renesas together offer audio-video media player reference design

Express Logic and Renesas Technology America have jointly released a comprehensive reference design platform for inexpensive media players. The media player platform is based on Renesas' SuperH SH-2A microcontroller architecture and Express Logic's ThreadX® RTOS, and enables access and display of media from USB flash drives or SD memory cards. Working model is demonstrated at Renesas' 2008 Developers' Conference this week in San Diego.

The features of this reference design are:
1. Renesas SuperH SH7263 development system with USB high-speed host and SD memory card
2. 640x480 VGA display
3. Express Logic's ThreadX RTOS, FileX file system, USBX USB stack, and PEGX GUI toolkit
4. Application software that enables touchscreen user interface, image display and audio file play
Support video and audio formats such as jpg, bmp, mp3, wav, wma, aac, and ogg

The reference design is aimed at system developers, providing them with a starting point for their products to save time and assist quick implementation.

William E. Lamie, president of Express Logic said, "Typical reference designs include only basic RTOS support, but this media player goes well beyond the basics to include a wealth of technology that saves developers the time normally required to integrate such capabilities."

All software components are available through royalty-free licenses, which means that none of the software adds to bill-of-material (BOM) cost. The Renesas SH-2A platform demonstrates the powerful processing performance available from the 200-MHz superscalar SH7263 microcontroller when coupled with real-time ThreadX RTOS. The device's application code is designed to use its floating-point unit (FPU) and onchip RAM for audio processing, while displaying images from a USB hosted memory stick or SD memory card on a VGA TFT LCD using its onchip LCD controller. Peripheral drivers and a board support package are available as part of the reference design.

Pricing and availability

The SH7263 reference design will be priced between $2,000 and $2,500 with sample boards available in Q1/2009.