LONDON — Japanese electronics manufacturers Epson Corp. and Renesas Technology Corp. are joining forces to define and develop an open-standard specification for a 200Mbit/s serial data rate interface for displays to be used in next-generation mobile applications.
Dubbed the "Mobile Video Interface" the specification envisages the use of a display control chip such as Epson's Mobile Graphics Engine. The engine would be controlled by a multimedia applications processor such as Renesas Technology's SH-Mobile device.
The companies have already started drafting the specifications for such an interface, and plan to make it available on a license-free basis to mobile application developers and mobile and other device manufacturers.
Epson and Renesas say they are keen to include other companies in the venture in order to accelerate the establishment of an open development environment.
The companies said they hope to begin releasing their respectiveMobile Video Interface-compliant products in the third quarter of 2004. The parts will be targeted at a wide range of products, including camera modules and mobile devices.
The interface would support full-duplex transmission, with the maximum data transfer rate between devices set at 200 Mbit/s per channel in both directions. The standard will also establish a fixed host-target relationship between devices.
Since the Mobile Video Interface circuit on the target side would receive a clock signal from the host side, there would be no need for a phase-locked loop to synchronize output signals and frequencies with input signals and base frequencies. This would reduce board space and power requirements.
