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Tue, January 10, 2012

Cavium Collaborates With Qualcomm Atheros on New Small Form-Factor, Portable Wireless Display TV Adapter


Published on 2012-01-10 05:09:35 - Market Wire
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January 10, 2012 08:03 ET

Cavium Collaborates With Qualcomm Atheros on New Small Form-Factor, Portable Wireless Display TV Adapter

New Reference Design From Cavium Leverages the PureVu™ CNW6611L and Qualcomm Atheros Dual-Band 802.11n Technology to Set a New Price-Performance Bar for Credit Card-Sized Wireless Display TV Adapter

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire - Jan 10, 2012) - Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: [ CAVM ]), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications, and the digital home, today announced a new ultra small wireless display TV adapter reference platform developed in collaboration with Qualcomm Atheros to address the emerging wireless display receiver market for mobile devices. The "Tiga-Mini" adapter enables consumers to project their content, whether stored locally or streamed wirelessly from nearby consumer electronics devices such as notebooks, tablets, smartphones, and other mobile CE devices to their large screen TV for a more enjoyable viewing experience. Cavium's new adapter is optimally designed for portability and ease of use, making it an ideal wireless display TV adapter for mobile devices. Live demonstrations of Cavium's new wireless display TV adapters are available at Cavium's suite at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, between January 10th and 13th.

According to iSuppli, Wi-Fi has become the de facto connectivity for consumer electronics devices. In fact, virtually all notebooks, tablets, smartphones and mobile game players shipping this year will provide WLAN functionality to end-users. Access to the wireless connection combined with advanced media processing in portable consumer electronics devices has created a tremendous, new opportunity for these devices to serve as the conduit for delivering a variety of content and subscription-based services to consumers. In order to enable such functionality for the installed base of over 800M TVs that are not equipped with wireless display capability, small and cost effective adapters are needed to wirelessly receive the content normally viewed on a small screen and properly format it for best viewing on the large screen TV. Cavium's Tiga-Mini wireless display adapter is ideally suited to address this application.

Tiga-Mini leverages the PureVu™ CNW6611L media SoC to provide full HD 1080p performance, HDCP 2.0 and DTCP premium content protection, and Cavium's industry-leading low latency video processing. The incorporation of Qualcomm Atheros' low power 802.11n Wi-Fi chipset, with its advanced Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display driver capabilities in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, makes the adapter design suitable to support a wide range of wireless display and media sharing applications, at mainstream retail price points. In addition, the ultra-low power design of both the media SoC and the Wi-Fi chipset enable Tiga-Mini to operate as a USB-powered device, eliminating the need for the external power supply. The high degree of integration used in this design allows for a 75 mm x 45 mm size and low bill-of-materials targeted for mainstream consumer pricing.

"Wireless sharing of media around the home is an emerging application of high interest to a wide array of consumer electronics OEMs and application providers," said Gary Szilagyi, vice president and general manager of consumer electronics, Qualcomm Atheros. "The new low-cost adapter from Cavium, which is optimally designed to address this application, is a result of close collaboration between Cavium and Qualcomm Atheros teams to enable high-quality and robust content delivery with our Wi-Fi chipset and Cavium's advanced media SoC."

Based on the recently introduced PureVu™ CNW6611L media SoC, the Tiga-Mini adapter design combines the 1080p video processing performance of the chip, with the flexibility of its ARM subsystem and the multi-format video and audio processor modules to enable the decode and display of a variety of media sharing protocols, including Cavium's WiVu, the Wi-Fi Alliance's forthcoming wireless display standard specification, as well as DLNA. Premium content support is also provided thanks to the hardware decryption engine that is capable of supporting HDCP 2.0 and DTCP-IP protocols. The video post-processing engine allows for further refinements and up-scaling of the decoded video prior to displaying on the TV monitor. A dedicated graphics engine with standard DirectFB API support enables customization of user menus and advanced graphical user interface.

"Cavium has already established its wireless display technology leadership in addressing consumer applications requiring a high degree of interactivity, as well as robust delivery of media content around the home," said Manoj Gujral, vice president and general manager of Cavium's Digital Home and Office Division. "Customers can use this new adapter reference design to address the mainstream segment of the market by enabling the mobile operators and smartphone/tablet OEMs to offer new and innovative wireless media sharing features on their products."

Cavium's CNW6611L and Tiga-Mini adapter reference design are available now. For pricing, contact your local Cavium sales representative.

About Cavium, Inc
Cavium is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing in networking, communications and the digital home. Cavium offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors ranging in performance from 10 Mbps to over 40 Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in enterprise, data-center, broadband/consumer and access & service provider equipment. Cavium's processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating systems, tool support, reference designs and other services. Cavium's principal offices are in San Jose, California with design team locations in California, Massachusetts, India, Taiwan and China. For more information, please visit: [ http://www.cavium.com ].


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