Portable Entertainment
The area of portable entertainment represents many end products, including portable media players, portable edutainment toys, digital cameras and camcorders, handheld games, portable GPS navigators, and so on. The following sections discuss the usage of programmable logic devices (PLDs) in two of these end-product categories: portable media players and portable edutainment toys.
Portable Media Player
Portable media players started as simple audio players, but evolved rapidly in response to consumer demand for devices that can handle video, audio, and data. The growing amount of digital media content and its delivery has increased the use of a new generation of portable media players that allow consumers to listen to music, watch videos, and view pictures, all on the same device.
A typical portable media player is usually small enough to carry in your hand and has a compact display with the basic capability to play video and audio files. It is perceivable that advanced features such as wireless media sharing, image and video capture, and gaming capabilities will become common in future generations of portable media players. Introduction of such advanced features is often driven by the desire of consumer electronic (CE) manufacturers to offer differentiated products in a competitive market.
Figure 1. Portable Media Player System Block Diagram
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In a typical portable media player system (Figure 1), the central functional block is the image processing controller. The basic functions required for the image processing controller can typically be implemented either in a digital signal processor or an ASIC/ASSP, but a companion PLD is often incorporated to allow for feature enhancements to enable a developer’s product differentiation strategy. The high pin counts and programmable features of CPLDs make them ideal devices for interface bridging between data formats or IO expansion when adding advanced features that are not available on the base platform.
CPLDs have also traditionally been used for board-level power management, voltage-level shifting, and DSP configuration functions. For portable systems, CPLDs maximize the system battery life by shutting down un-used ICs in the system.
Finally, the non-volatile nature of CPLDs provides a way for developers to implement security functions for protection of content, user-specific information, and intellectual property.
Portable Edutainment Toys
Portable edutainment toys are educational toys that both teach and entertain children. The demand for these types of toys is growing because parents are insisting on toys that not only entertain but educate their children.
In a typical portable edutainment toy system (Figure 2), the central functional block is the signal conditioning controller. The signal conditioning controller positions the motor based on inputs from an external sensor, processes and loads images to the display panel, handles audio processing functions such as audio tone synthesis, and manages external audio sources. Because these three functions are unique to the system specifications of the end product, a CPLD implementation provides a combination of benefits, including maximum design flexibility, low risk, and fastest time to market.
Similar to the portable media player application, CPLDs are ideal for interface bridging, I/O expansion, power management, voltage-level shifting, Digital signal processing (DSP) configuration, and clock generation functions.
Figure 2. Edutainment Toy System Block Diagram
Why Are CE Manufacturers Using Altera’s PLDs?
For both portable media player and portable edutainment toy applications, consumer electronics manufacturers face rapidly changing market requirements and are under pressure to offer differentiated products to stay ahead of the competition. Employing only ASIC or ASSP design methodologies put manufacturers at significant risk of either being late to the market or releasing a product with dated features. Employing programmable logic in their platform gives them agility for time-to-market and the flexibility of adding the latest features to their products. Altera is the only PLD company that offers very low-cost FPGAs and a cost-reduction path to structured ASICs for high-performance applications.
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