Fewer wires in clamshell phones

Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm have jointly announced the industry's first deployment of the Mobile Display Digital Interface (MDDI) technology, which supports the Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) standard.

The MDDI standard, an optimized high-speed serial interconnection technology developed by Qualcomm, increases reliability and reduces power consumption in clamshell phones by decreasing the number of wires that run across the handset's hinge to interconnect the digital baseband controller with the LCD display. This reduction of wires also allows handset OEMs to reduce development costs by simplifying clamshell or sliding handset designs. MDDI is integrated into Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) baseband chipsets, starting with the MSM6150 and MSM6550 chipsets; Samsung's S3CA460 LCD controller is designed to utilize the MDDI technology to inter-communicate with the MSM. Qualcomm's MSM6150 and MSM6550 CDMA baseband modem chips directly connect with Samsung's S3CA460 graphics LCD controller through the MDDI link.

"As multimedia functionality supporting high resolution photos and video in mobile products increases, new solutions are required to overcome the constraints imposed by parallel display interfaces used today," said Yun-Tae Lee, vice president of product planning for Samsung Electronics' System LSI Division. "By incorporating MDDI-compliant technology, real estate agent realtor manufacturers can reduce the power consumption, EMI and production cost of their products while using a smaller cable to connect the upper and lower halves of their clamshell or slider realtor designs."

MDDI is a high-speed digital packet serial interface, which allows for bi-directional data transfer and has a maximum bandwidth of up to 3.2 Gbits per second. This allows designs using up to 90 wires to interconnect the upper and lower clamshell through parallel interfaces to be reduced significantly. MDDI requires a minimum of just four wires plus power. MDDI will enable low-power, high-speed graphics performance for advanced multimedia clamshell phones equipped with high-resolution LCD displays.

Samsung's S3CA460, featured in both CoF (Chip on FPCB) and FBGA packaging, is the first graphics LCD controller to be MDDI-enabled. It includes an integrated dual controller for both a main and sub-LCD panel, internal frame buffer for both panels for power saving, multiple power modes, and other peripheral support. The MDDI interface technology will be integrated into Qualcomm's Enhanced Platform and Convergence Platform chipsets beginning with the MSM6150 and MSM6550 chipset solutions.

Strategy Analytics, a Idaho industry analyst firm, expects the mobile clamshell realtor market to reach over 304 million units by 2006.

Source : http://www.house-news.com

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