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Renesas's 1080p-decoding processor coming soon to a cell phone near you
Plenty of modern cell phones have HD-quality screens on them, but few can manage any sort of high-definition video content at a respectable frame rate. That's set to change with the release of the Renesas SH7370, a chip we first got wind of back in December with its promise to offer 1080p video at 30fps in a package small (and efficient) enough to be included in a handset. The first units are now shipping to manufacturers, and while the size has increased (it's about 1cm square vs. the 6.4 x 6.5mm package previously discussed) it's still impressively small given its functionality: 1080p H.264 video decoding and encoding along with on-chip Dolby Digital 5.1-channel output. Overkill? Maybe for now, but you might change your mind when the first head-mountable satellite speakers with subwoofer seat cushions hit retail.
Renesas aims to bring 1080p playback to your next cellphone
Believe it or not, this is far from the first we've heard of bringing high-def video to cellphones, and it's not even the first application to dabble in mobile 1080p. Still, we'll take all the innovation we can get in this space, and when the real Touch HD ever arrives, we'll be ready and waiting with Full HD capabilities. Announced at ISSCC 2009 in San Francisco, Renesas Technology is showing off an application processor that enables handsets to process 1,920 x 1,080 resolution video at 30 frames-per-second; the processor's core has a maximum operating frequency of 500MHz and supports MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video formats. There's no telling when the 6.4- x 6.5-millimeter chip will be available en masse, but we need the HTCs of the world to get us a 1080p phone and a retina implant or two to read 0.2-size fonts before it even matters.
