Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. will be developing a single-chip multicore processor for hi-def imaging. The chip will be equipped with four FR-V processor cores (FR550) with operation frequencies of 533 MHz. Using software only, it will process images at speeds of up to 51.2 GOPS (giga operations per second) and data transfer rates of 1 GBps-both four times that of its Fujitsu's conventional FR-V processors, according to the Tokyo tech giant. Such speeds were previously the domain of large-scale integrated circuit chips, and with software-driven processing, updates are possible without hardware replacement.
Power consumption is 3 W, compared to about 50 for a regular PC processor, Fujitsu said.
The chip is aimed at the consumer HDTV market. Fujitsu presented details of the chip at the 2005 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Feb. 6-10, in San Francisco. The company intends to have the chip on the market this year.
