LCD scalers hit volume production

STMicroelectronics has confirmed availability in volume of the recently announced ADE3800 "Kona" family of LCD scaler chips.

STMicroelectronics has confirmed availability in volume of the recently announced ADE3800 "Kona" family of LCD scaler chips.

The new products build on the success of the widely used "Loihi" and "Lanai" families, using an advanced 0.15-micron process technology for minimum die size and offering more output options, a new and very advanced on screen display (OSD) engine, and improved performance, with three of the four devices in the family available in a cost-effective 14 x 14mm 100-pin package.

ST's ADE3800 scalers provide a highly integrated solution for LCD monitor manufacturers, taking analogue RGB (red green blue) video input signals and generating RSDS (reduced swing differential signal) or LVDS (low voltage differential signal) outputs for LCDs up to XGA (1024 x 768 pixel) or SXGA (1280 x 1024 pixel) resolution.

As well as high-quality scaling from 5:1 upscale to 2:1 downscale and generating the necessary timing signals, the Kona chips also include a broad range of additional features designed to enhance the end user's experience and to minimise the load on the monitor's microcontroller, allowing a simpler and cheaper MCU to be used.

The high performance OSD engine redesigned and enhanced from the display engine of the earlier ADE3700 "Lanai" scaler now offers 1 to 4bit/pixel text display with proportional fonts, a 64-colour TrueColor palette with 4bit alpha blending, and supports multiple-window displays up to full screen size with the text placed anywhere on the screen.

Bordering, shadowing, transparency, fade in and out, and font rotation effects are built-in, and the OSD can easily be animated and can "fly" into position.

The new features are designed to satisfy the most demanding OSD specifications.

The four products in the ADE3800 family provide embedded output interfaces for either LVDS or RSDS display signals, at either XGA or SXGA resolutions.

All use the LQFP100 (low-profile quad-flatpack) package, except for the SXGA RSDS ADE3800SXT which is supplied in a LQFP128.

A programmable timing controller (TCON) provides versatile control of the external timing signals required by XGA/SXGA SmartPanels; its software interface has been simplified to allow easier programming, with common functions hard coded.

An advanced flicker detection and reduction scheme is included, and a pattern generator is built in for production testing.

"ST is among the world's leading suppliers of display circuits, including dedicated system-on-chip solutions, microcontrollers, memories and power products", said Gabriel Guglielmi, Business Development Manager for ST's Display ICs Division.

"The Loihi and Lanai scalers are widely used in currently available monitors, and mass production deliveries of Kona to major LCD monitor manufacturers has already started".

ST's IQ Scaling engine uses context-sensitive scaling to detect picture content and choose the optimum scaling algorithms to deliver both sharp text and smooth graphics in the final image, in up to four different windows.

The appropriate levels of sharpening and gamma correction are applied automatically, using a 30bit programmable and noninterpolated gamma table.

Picture quality is further enhanced by the PerfectColor engine, which provides programmable 3D colour warp within the RGB colour space; enables digital brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation control; and uses the industry's most sophisticated temporal and spatial dithering technology to provide precise colour representation across different LCD panels.

Video input resolution has been increased from 9 to 10bit per colour, with an advanced three-channel, 140MHz, 10bit ADC, with an ultra-low-jitter digital line-lock PLL.

Communication with the host MCU is via an economical I2C serial interface, and the scalers require few external components.

The package pin-out is designed to allow a two-layer printed circuit board, and PCB layout is further simplified by the provision of two sets of I2C bus and reset pins.

Kona will also be available in lead-free packages by the first quarter of 2005, using ST's Ecopack lead-free technology for RoHS-compliance.

Additional features now under qualification include UXGA capability (1600 x 1200 pixel) with no additional memory requirement and with pixel rate up to 203Mpixel/s; a 203MHz ADC; and an optimised solution for low cost LCD-TV with spatial de-interlacing, eliminating the need for a frame rate convertor and external memory.

Available now, pricing for the ADE3800 is US $6, in quantities of 1000.

The dual-input version, which is pin-to-pin compatible with the ADE3800, will be sampling by the end of the year.

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