Following the announcement from Adobe of the open screen project, news comes from the Embedded Systems Expo that NEC is showing what sounds like it might be an alternative to Adobe's Flash Lite Player.
Its a little hard to make complete sense of the post from EETimes.com. But some interesting quotes from the short, slightly cryptic article:
By using our new IP, one can design a portable device capable of processing Adobe Flash Lite several times faster, when compared with using a processor.
Also in the announcement is a hint of better video quality as well.
After reducing the number of gates required for an IC and further tuning the video quality output by Adobe Flash Lite, NEC will start offering its IP in August this year.
One thing that does seem to be missing is an explanation of which Flash Lite version they are supporting, although the mention of video implies this is based around the FlashLite 3 player.
You can read the full (breif) announcement of NEC's new Flash Lite IP over at EETimes.com.
One further interesting thing is that I could find no mention of NEC being involved with the Open Screen Project from its press release.
Credit where its due: EETimes.com
4 responses so far ↓
1 John Dowdell // May 16, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Thanks for the link. That article reads ambiguously to me too.
One possibility is that they’re offloading video decompression to hardware, similar to On2’s Hantro work.
Or it might be that they’re doing something with the Open Screen Project… this specifically allows for device customization.
We’ll hear when it ships, I guess….
jd/adobe
2 Dave // May 18, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Ambiguous is certainly the word. But intriguing none the less. Lets see what it brings in august!
3 RSD // Nov 16, 2008 at 2:28 am
Well…here it is the middle of November and still no word on this tech. So much for August. My e-mail to NEC soliciting further info has, of course, fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps it’s only available with a non-disclosure agreement(as is the case with WRTime) but so far, no response from NEC or updates from anyone else. Just curious if anyone else is tracking this. Per the usual, initial announcements abound, but rarely any follow-up.
4 RSD // Dec 19, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Update to previous comment: NEC finally delivered on their promised Flash Lite hardware-based acceleration technology.
Here’s the Dec. 10th news release: http://www.necst.co.jp/english/press/20081210/index.htm
Here’s a much older but related post: http://www.necst.co.jp/english/press/20080513/index.htm
The hardware-based acceleration uses an OpenGL 1.1 compliant graphics rendering engine called GA88 Series/IWAYAG.
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