Cirrus Logic Inc has unveiled its new VisualMedia acceleration technology, which it claims could bring higher-end visual applications to the consumer market. The chip features an integrated 170MHz true colour RAMDAC and dual 170MHz and 250MHz programmable clock synthesisers to support non-interlaced resolutions of up to 1,600 by 1,200. Colour depths are supported up to 32bits per pixel which includes 24-bit true colour with 8-bit alpha channel. This high-speed circuitry is the fastest analogue circuit incorporated on a graphics chip, claims the company. The result is complete elimination of any screen flicker – it is intended to meet the demands of next-generation multimedia, interactive and three-dimensional applications, said Douglas Bartek, president of the company’s Visual and Systems Interface Company. We are supporting 500Mbps memory bandwidth capacity, which significantly surpasses standard 64-bit memory bandwidth capacities that range between 200Mbps and 300Mbps. Cirrus told the Newsbytes news service that Videoconferencing is the most obvious use for this new technology. It will give the ability simultaneously to display multiple video windows at 30 frames per second along with high-resolution graphics. This speed and quality is available today in Video RAM, but at a higher cost. With this technology, Cirrus says dynamic RAM capabilities approach the current high-end Video RAM chips. Dynamic RAM is less expensive, and while Video RAM is dedicated to graphics, our Dynamic RAM gives a customer economy of scale, because it can be used for other purposes, said the company, which plans to offer speeds up to 1Gbps memory bandwidth capacity by early next year.
