Analog giant National Semiconductor Corporation unveiled this week what it is calling the industry’s most efficient interface for driving full high-definition televisions with greater than one billion colors. The transmit and receive chipset offers a dual 10-bit low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) interface for full HDTV applications of 1920 x 1080 resolution, including LCD, plasma, and rear projection televisions.

"The LVDS transmit and receive chipset broadens National's portfolio of display ICs designed to drive the future of flat panel and digital television," said Jean-Louis Bories, senior VP of the company’s displays division, in a statement. The product’s performance, together with its efficient packaging option, making it a leading technology, he added.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said its DS90C3201 transmitter receives a 70-bit parallel stream of RGB data from the image processing engine and sends it to the panel using 10 LVDS pairs (or 20 total lines). The DS90C3202 receiver receives the LVDS data and coverts it back to the original 70-bit low voltage transistor-transistor logic stream for use by panel control ASICs and timing controllers.

The chipset is sampling now, and the chips will be priced at $8 each in 1,000 unit production quantities, according to National.