NEC Electronics and its subsidiaries in the United States and Europe, NEC Electronics America, Inc. and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, announced the launch of three single-chip melody LSI solutions that offer superior sound technology for mobile phones.

The product line-up consists of the ?PD9993 chip, which offers 64 polyphonic tones and is the first LSI device to support MP3 and advanced audio coding (AAC) playback; the ?PD9996 chip for low-end monaural (single-speaker) mobile phones, which is pin-compatible with the NEC Electronics ?PD9990/1/2 series of melody solutions; and the ?PD9995 chip, a smallest-in-class monaural chip first introduced in September 2003.

The ?PD9993 chip incorporates a digital signal processor (DSP) core for MP3 and AAC decoding, which enables playback of audio files in high-quality MP3 and AAC formats in addition to conventional musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) format. Incorporating a DSP core eliminates the need for an additional LSI chip to support these functions. The ?PD9993 chip also employs leading surround sound from DiMAGIC's Adaptive Surround Technology*, which processes two audio channels to produce five channels of stereo-wide surround sound. These features significantly enhance the sound quality in mobile phones, allowing users listening through headphones to enjoy music stored in their phones at CD quality, or to use songs instead of ring tones to indicate an incoming call.

The ?PD9996 chip provides specialized monaural (single-speaker) functions while eliminating high-end functions such as surround sound and external digital input/output (I/O) to offer an affordable sound synthesizer solution. The ?PD9996 chip has a pin layout compatible with the NEC Electronics ?PD9990/1/2 melody chips, which enables manufacturers to develop low-end mobile phones based on their existing ?PD9990/1/2 designs.

The ?PD9995 offers monaural playback in a smallest-in-class package of 4.38 x 4.38 millimeters (mm). An optimized design configuration has reduced the pin count to 48, resulting in a 50 percent smaller package that enables greater flexibility in mobile phone design and reduces bill-of-materials costs for manufacturers.

Pricing and Availability
Samples of the ?PD9993, ?PD9995 and ?PD9996 chips are available now. The unit price for ?PD9993 samples is US$15, and the unit price for ?PD9996 and ?PD9995 samples is US$5 each. Volume production is scheduled to start in November 2004, and combined production for all three models is expected to reach two million units per month by March 2005.