HONG KONG: Frontier Silicon Ltd, the market leading supplier of digital radio technology worldwide will be demonstrating their latest reference design, Mercury 4i, at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Spring Edition). Mercury 4i integrates popular audio features including WorldDMB Profile 1 Digital Radio, CD, iPod/iPhone docking and FM into a single platform, with all of these features controlled by the widely adopted Verona2i DAB/DAB+/DMB-R/FM module also from Frontier Silicon.
“There is a strong rise in the integration of Digital Radio into CD micro and mini Hi-Fi systems with the attach rate of DAB in this segment increasing to over 22%1 in the UK over the last year, and this number will continue to grow as countries such as Germany launch their new DAB+ services.” said Anthony Sethill, CEO at Frontier Silicon. “The Mercury 4i platform has been designed to enable Hi-Fi CD system manufacturers to significantly reduce their BOM costs without compromising their DAB/DAB+/DMB-R radio performance by using the Verona 2i module as the main system controller.”
Using the multi-threaded RISC/DSP processor included on the Verona2i module the Mercury 4i platform is able to perform the radio reception (DAB/DAB+/DMB-R/FM) while retaining memory and processing capacity to perform other functions in the system such as iPod/iPhone docking, CD control and running the user interface. As these tasks are normally carried out by a separate microcontroller, using Mercury 4i can offer a significant cost advantage when it comes to adding DAB/DAB+/DMB-R to this class of product.
Mercury 4i is a fully-qualified WorldDMB Profile 1 reference design for price sensitive, entry level CD applications with DAB/DAB+/DMB-R/FM and iPhone/iPod docking. Mercury 4i provides a flexible architecture, enabling OEMs to use the design as-is, modified or as a starting point to speed development of custom products.
Mercury 4i provides a fast-track route for packaging the latest audio technology with the lowest possible bill-of-materials (BOM) and shortest time to market.
Mercury 4i is provided complete with a full engineering design pack which includes detailed specification, schematics, layouts, bill-of-materials and software. EMC and ESD compliance reports are also available as well as pre-scan results for Made for iPhone/iPod (MFi). Support is available to customise the platform for individual requirements.
The platform is production ready and needs only industrial design tooling to finish off a complete high-quality audio system. The platform has two options for CD controller from two of Frontier Silicon’s partners, the Silan SC9640 (CD to Digital Audio only) or the Toshiba Kowloon-612 device (with MP3 and WMA support).
The Mercury 4 reference design is also available, providing manufactures to produce a CD Micro system with digital and FM radio without the dock option.
A number of lead partner brands will have Mercury 4 and Mercury 4i based CD micro systems on retailers’ shelves from the end of Q2 2011.
Mercury 4i and Mercury 4 reference designs are available now.
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