NEC Electronics expanded its Blu-ray disc LSI family with the new "SCOMBO/UM2P", a single-chip LSI for Blu-ray players and recorders.

The new LSI is the successor of the company's previous solution, the "SCOMBO/UM". The new LSI is the company's first to integrate both the Analog and the Digital signal processors on a single chip. This allowed NEC to offer the chip 20% smaller than its predecessor, while it consumes 33% less power (1.8W). Its compact design is expected to contribute to an overall cost reduction for the upcoming Blu-ray recorders, players and PC drives.

Analogue processors mainly control the optical pickup unit of a device while the DSP is responsible for functions such wdata modulation and demodulation as well as error correction. The LSI can be installed in Blu-ray recorders and players and supports recording speeds of up to 8x for the Blu-ray.

The LSI includes controllers that support both serial ATA (μPD63421A) and parallel ATA interfaces (μPD63420A), copyright protection technologies for DVD recordable drives such as CSS, CPRM and VCPS, as well as AACS, while it can be connected with various types of external SDRAM required for DVD recordable drive configurations.

NEC plans to release two versions of the LSI for Blu-ray recorders and Blu-ray players. The BD recorder's version offers support for 48x read/write speed for CD, 20x read/write for DVD and 8x read/write for Blu-ray. The version for BD players supports 5x playback for Blu-ray, 12x for DVD and 24x for CD.

NEC has already providing samples of the new LSI and plans to start mass production in the end of fiscal year 2008.

The company believes that it will gain the 50% share of the overall market of LSIs for Blu-ray devices. The company currently competes with MediaTek, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. and Renesas Technology in the market of LSIs for BD drives.

NEC also plans to promote the integration of the read-only chip and the company's image processing SoC chip "EMMA," which is reportedly under development.