Osaka, Japan – Panasonic, the leading brand by which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. is known, has developed the world’s first Blu-ray Disc (BD) player-specific single-chip signal processing LSI (product number: MN2WS006), in response to the latest BD standards*2. This LSI combines a front end to read the signal from the BD, and a back end to convert this into AV data. Samples of this LSI will begin shipping in June 2008.

Multi-standard video decoding technology to enable video playback for BD, DVD, and CD media, and standards including MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and VC-1; high-quality audio playback compatible with lossless coding; and dual-screen simultaneous video playback including high definition video, and a high-performance and high-speed graphics engine technology which enables not only 2D graphic processing but also 3D graphic processing or curved surface drawing
Unified memory architecture technology reducing about 45% of major semiconductor parts** (including external memories) together with integration of LSIs into a single chip using 45-nanometer process technology
New-generation UniPhier®*3 platform technology making it possible to reuse the 75% of software assets of BD recorder, and enabling us to improve our development efficiency by three times** as a result of concentrated development for function improvement only
Up to now, in order to construct BD players with conventional BD LSI, separate front end and back end LSI were required, in addition to seven external memory chips. Since the BD market is now expected to grow rapidly, it was necessary to rationalize the signal processing components in order to realize better functionality and appeal to the hot-selling zone of LSIs.