Imageon

The Imageon (previously ATI Imageon) is a line of media processors developed by ATI providing graphics acceleration and other multimedia features for handheld devices such as mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA).

Designed as system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Imageon line of media processors was introduced in 2002 to bring integrated graphics (from 2D in 2002 to 3D in latest products) to handheld devices, cellphones and Tablet PCs.

The system-on-a-chip design incorporates an embedded CPU core, baseband sub-system CPU interface, memory controller, power management (ATI PowerPlay), internal RAM and stacked RAM with memory buffer, two display engines (for dual monitors on cellphones), imaging engine, image/video/audio capture engine, TV and audio output, dual Digital Signal Processors for audio and video, and video acceleration engine.

The Imageon line was rebranded under AMD, after AMD acquired ATI in Q3 2006, as AMD Imageon, with official claims to have shipped nearly 250 million Imageon units to customers since 2003. However as a result of company restructuring, AMD has divested the handheld chipset business starting from the second quarter of 2008, thus the line is deemed officially discontinued.

Product line

Discontinued/Past generations

*Imageon 100, the first product of the Imageon line.
*Imageon 3200.
*Imageon 2200/2250. Integrated a 2D graphics engine, a MPEG decoder, JPEG decoding and encoding capabilities, with embedded SRAM on-die as frame buffer.
*Imageon 2240.
*Imageon 2260/2262.
*Imageon 2300. Included 2D and 3D graphics engine (3D S/W), MPEG-4 video decoder, JPEG encoding/decoding, and 2 Megapixel camera sub-system processing engine.
*Imageon 2182.
*Imageon 2282.
*Imageon 2388/2380. Featuring industry first OpenGL for embedded systems (ES) 1.1+ extensions support, for 3D acceleration.
*Imageon 2192. For mainstream devices with support for 3.1-megapixel camera sensor.

Current generation

*Imageon 2294/2298, renamed as Imageon M100 series. Current top-of-line product, processor includes DVD quality recording and playback, TV output, and supports up to a 12-megapixel camera sensor. Products include Imageon M180.
*Imageon TV. Announced in February 2006, as the first Imageon product in the line featuring Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H) signal receiving support, allowing handhelds devices to receive digital broadcast TV (DVB-H) signals and enables watching TV programs on these devices, the chipset includes tuner, demodulator, decoder, and a full software stack.

Announced in 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, AMD renews the Imageon line with the following products:
*Imageon A250 application processor
**Standalone multimedia and graphics subsystem
**D1 resolution video (720×486)
**Support for 8-megapixel camera sensor, JPEG, dual display
**USB, SD and NAND support
**Vector graphics
**Flash applications and UI supported
**Energy efficiency
*Imageon D160 mobile TV solution
**Free-to-air DVB-T and DVB-H reception
**quality of service and Doppler compensation for DVB signals for high speed mobility
**Complete DVB-T/H receiver module
**Multi-channel decode with PiP, fast channel change, and video recording
**AMD software stack (including Middleware) and 3rd party support
**Energy efficiencyIn addition to the application processor and the mobile TV solution chip, AMD also licenses several technologies to other firms and partners, such technologies include audio and graphics processors, as listed below:
*Imageon M210 audio processor
**Multi-band equalizer
**Automatic gain control
**99 db signal-to-noise ratio
**Supporting over 30 codecs including
***MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, AC3, DTS, MIDI with SMAF support, 3D audio, MPEG-4 SLS, FLAC
***support for 3rd party codecs and other codecs through downloading
**Standalone audio playback
**Energy efficiency of about 33 mW allowing 100 hours of audio playback [cite web |url=http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/MWC08_AMD_Press_Presentation.pdf |title=AMD Handheld Multimedia Technology – Unleash The Ultimate Mobile Entertainment Experience |accessdate=2008-02-15 |date=2008-02-12 |format=PDF |publisher=AMD |pages=17 |quote=~32mW Audio Subsystem for playing from SD/NAND (900mAh/3.7V battery; 150mV_rms into 16 Ω headphones.] with integrated power management
**Integrated memory
**Integrated analog audio codec
**USB 2.0, NAND, SD and Bluetooth support
*Imageon Z460 3D graphics core
**OpenGL ES 2.0 support
**Unified shaders
***Programmable vertex shaders and pixel shaders
**Support for WVGA (800×480, 848×480, or 854×480) and QHD (640×360) resolutions
**Claimed on par with high-end portable game consoles in terms of performance
*Imageon Z180 vector graphics core
**Hardware OpenVG 1.x rendering acceleration
**Claimed 20-40x faster than software-based implementations [cite web |url=http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/AMD_Z180_AMD_Z460_Graphics_Fact_Sheet.pdf |title=Product fact sheet for Imagon Z460 ans Z180 |accessdate=2008-02-15 |date=2008-02-12 |format=PDF |publisher=AMD |pages=17 |quote= [baseline performance] measured on ARM9 Versatile (ARM926EJ-S) at 210 MHz using a commercially available software rasterizer.]
**Support for HD resolution
**16X antialiasing for fonts and vector graphics
**Flash support for web application
**Energy efficiency

Future development

Future developments to be present on or before 2009, including embedded x86 microprocessor, support for OpenVG, OpenGL for Embedded Systems 2.1 with unified shaders (VS/PS 4.0/4.1), support for higher resolution of camera sensors (5 Megapixels for mainstream and more than 12 Megapixels for high-end products), display resolution support for WVGA (800×480), SVGA (800×600) and XVGA (1024×768) resolutions, H.264 encoding for video recording, AEC, voice recognition and 3D audio.

The Imageon TV will also feature support for ISDB-T and DMB standards, and multi-mode support (likely to support DMB-T/H, the dual standard implemented in PRC).

ee also

*Nvidia GoForce media co-processor and NVIDIA APX 2500, current and future competitors
*Bitboys Gxx series media co-processors, previous competitor, acquired by ATI
*Falanx series media co-processors, previous competitor, now become ARM Norway
*Imagination Technologies PowerVR MBX and SGX media co-processors, IP license-based products, current competitor
*Mitsubishi Z3D family media co-processors
*Toshiba T4G media co-processor

References

External links

* [http://ati.amd.com/products/handheld.html AMD Imageon]
* [http://ati.amd.com/myphone/index.html Imageon Demo]