Inmos Ltd has announced immediate availability of its G177 Power Down Colour Look Up Table, also known as a CLUT. The company is claiming that it is the smallest and least power hungry Look Up Table available, designed particularly for laptops, notebook and other portable personal computers. The device has an on-chip power management system to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation, and there are three modes of operation. In standby, the G177 is powered down, while in review mode, data remains valid and may be accessed through the microport while the rest of the device is powered down. In normal mode, it operates as Inmos’ IMS G176 VGA Colour Look Up Table, said to provide the VGA output which drives the monitor but still consume less power than competitive offerings. The down modes are controlled via two pins on the chip which enable direct connection to standard low-power VGA controllers without the costs of extra software. Anti-sparkle circuitry is said to enhance picture quality by alleviating on-screen snow or sparkle effects generated by some software packages when they perform read or write operations to the palette during video. Inmos says that the G177 is highly integrated with on-chip comparators contributing to board cost and space reduction. The comparators are used for monitor detection, and the 32-pin package occupies around 50% of the area of a 44-pin package, or a third of that occupied by a 28-pin package. The Colour Palette output device interfaces the box to a monitor, displaying 256 different colours on-screen from 256,000 colours, and the G177 enables portable computers to be connected to full colour monitors with the same resolution, colours and quality as a desk-top machine.
