Renesas Technology Releases Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware as SH-Mobile Application Processor Software

Simplifying implementation of mobile phone applications supporting high-sound-quality music distribution services and terrestrial digital broadcasting

Tokyo, June 6, 2005 −− Renesas Technology Corp. today announced the development of software dubbed "Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware," supporting the Enhanced aacPlus^*1 audio coding technology offering high sound quality, for use in multimedia application development for mobile phone systems using an SH-Mobile^*2 application processor. The Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware will be available from June 7, 2005 in Japan.

The "Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware" is the successor to the current "aacPlus Decoding Middleware", and offers the following features.

(1)	Providing development solutions for Enhanced aacPlus applications
	This new middleware will simplify the development of applications supporting music data distribution, video distribution with audio, and similar services using Enhanced aacPlus in mobile phone systems employing an SH-Mobile application processor. The Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware will thus provide development solutions for applications supporting the aacPlus standard, including Enhanced aacPlus, which is expected to become widely adopted in various kinds of services.
(2)	Optimized for the SH4AL-DSP top-end SH-Mobile CPU core, allowing full use of the SH4AL-DSP's capabilities
	The current aacPlus Decoding Middleware is optimized for the SH-Mobile SH3-DSP CPU core. This new middleware is optimized for the top-end SH4AL-DSP CPU core in addition to the SH3-DSP, providing an approximately 20% processing load reduction in SH4AL-DSP core products compared with the current middleware.  This will offer users an extra performance margin in developing multimedia applications such as music players and moving image players with voice and audio capability.
(3)	Terrestrial digital broadcasting audio processing capability plus low-power mode for longer viewing/listening times
	A decision has been made to formally adopt aacPlus as an audio codec for domestic Japanese terrestrial digital broadcasts. Terrestrial digital broadcast audio processing requires processing of audio multiplex channels (dual monaural channels) comprising main and sub audio channels in addition to monaural and stereo channels. Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware newly incorporates dual monaural channel audio processing capability, enabling terrestrial digital broadcasting to be handled. A low-power mode function is also included. Use of this function helps to extend terrestrial digital broadcasting viewing/listening time, for example.

Product Background

The mobile phone multimedia application field has recently seen a rapid proliferation of services such as music and video data distribution, and the provision of higher-quality audio and video multimedia data has led to improved services and higher added value. Progress is consequently being made in the provision and standardization of coding methods capable of providing large volumes of high-quality multimedia data in a compact form.

Renesas Technology earlier released the SH-Mobile as a dedicated processor for application processing to simplify the development of multimedia applications for mobile phone systems. The company also offers various kinds of middleware as a multimedia application development solution, and, in order to meet the need for higher audio quality, has released aacPlus Decoding Middleware supporting the highly efficient aacPlus coding standard which is expected to become increasingly popular in music and video distribution services in Japan and overseas. Now Renesas Technology has developed Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware supporting Enhanced aacPlus, an even more efficient coding method than aacPlus.

Product Details

aacPlus is a highly efficient audio coding technology that combines AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) and the SBR^® (Spectral Band Replication)^*3 technology developed by Coding Technologies. aacPlus offers twice the coding efficiency of the conventional AAC LC method, enabling data of the same quality to be achieved at approximately half the data transfer speed (bit rate).

The Enhanced aacPlus decoding method improves the compression ratio through the use of the Parametric Stereo tool (PS)^*4, jointly developed by Coding Technologies and Royal Philips Electronics, in addition to the aacPlus technology.

This makes it possible to achieve higher sound quality at limited data transfer speeds on communication lines, and to maintain the same sound quality as before at a lower data transfer speed.

Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware is decoding middleware that complies with the MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC Profile standard and implements the SBR technology and PS technology introduced by Coding Technologies.

In the implementation of an Enhanced aacPlus decoder, the SH-Mobile's on-chip DSP is used to the full, and from the standpoint of software pipelining^*5, algorithm optimization has been carried out in line with the architecture of the SH-Mobile. This provides performance fully capable of decoding Enhanced aacPlus data in a mobile phone system.

This middleware also provides a C-language function interface. This is the same function interface as in the current aacPlus Decoding Middleware, facilitating migration of applications.

Combining Enhanced aacPlus Decoding Middleware with Renesas Technology’s MPEG-4, H.264, or similar moving image middleware makes it possible to provide a variety of development solutions, including easy implementation of multimedia applications for terrestrial digital broadcasting.

Renesas Technology will continue to develop SH-Mobile middleware products supporting a variety of mobile phone multimedia applications to help improve user development efficiency.

Notes:	1.	aacPlus is a trademark of Coding Technologies. Enhanced aacPlus is equivalent to the technology called aacPlus v2 by Coding Technologies. Coding Technologies URL: http://www.codingtechnologies.com/
	2.	SH-Mobile (SuperHTM Mobile Application Processor): An original Renesas Technology processor for mobile phone systems that is connected to a baseband LSI and performs dedicated processing of audio, moving image, and similar multimedia applications SuperH is a trademark of Renesas Technology Corp.
	3.	SBR (Spectral Band Replication) is a highly efficient digital audio data coding technology developed by Coding Technologies. SBR is a registered trademark of Coding Technologies. In the compression process, the effective amount of audio data is halved by performing down-sampling (halving the sampling rate), and in the expansion process, data is restored by performing up-sampling. The special technological feature here is that data lost during down-sampling (high-frequency spectrum data) is restored by using auxiliary parameters in the expansion process.
	4.	PS (Parametric Stereo) is a highly efficient digital audio data coding technology developed by Coding Technologies and Royal Philips Electronics. In the compression process, the effective amount of audio data is reduced by mixing and monauralizing stereo data, and in the expansion process, stereo data is restored. The special technological feature here is that data such as left/right sound characteristics lost during mixing is restored by using auxiliary parameters in the expansion process.
	5.	Software pipelining : A programming technique for improving software processing efficiency by optimizing the order in which processor instructions are executed. Interdependence between instructions is taken into consideration in optimizing the execution order to increase the degree of parallelism of instruction execution.

*Other product names, company names, or brands mentioned are the property of their respective owners.


<Typical Applications>

Development of aacPlus and Enhanced aacPlus compatible applications for mobile phone systems using the SH-Mobile

Specifications

Item	Specifications
Applicable device	SH-Mobile
Supported OS	µITRON*
Standard compliance	International standards ISO/IEC14496-3:2001 compliant ISO/IEC14496-3:2001/Amd 1 : 2003 compliant ISO/IEC14496-3:2001/Amd 2 : 2004 compliant
Supported audio formats	MPEG2/4-AAC/aacPlus/Enhanced aacPlus
Sampling rate	8 to 96 kHz (AAC) 16 to 48 kHz (aacPlus)
Bit rate	8K to 576K bits/sec (AAC) 8K to 128K bits/sec (aacPlus)

^* ITRON : Industrial TRON. TRON is an abbreviation of "The Real-time Operating System Nucleus."

Information contained in this news release is current as of the date of the press announcement, but may be subject to change without prior notice.