At the IBC 2004 exhibition in Amsterdam, Ahead Software announced the availability of VHDL cores for decoding Nero Digital Audio, and demonstrated several prototypes.

The chips support the full range of LC AAC, HE AAC and PS AAC audio playback, feature a built-in equalizer, and are additionaly available in very low cost versions.

http://www.nero.com/en/conventions.html

Furthermore optimized decoders for various DSP platforms are available.

This will further open up the possibilities for full NeroDigital MPEG 4 AAC support in a wide range of portable and standalone devices.

Good deal, as this will provide alternative for consumers.

Good news.
I hope, iRiver and others will use it...

What exactly does it cost?

The chip can be produced for under 10 euro (given that you produce a lot (750k or so)).

Menno

That's a good development, but are there any Brand Name manufacturers considering these chips? By brand name I mean Panasonic, JVC, Philips etc.

I am hoping these chips show up in portable cd players as well as flash or HD based music portables. I am tired of portable cd players only supporting CDA, mp3, and /or wma exclusively. I would love to make usable aac cds for portable use.

look something usefull for a new generation ipod.

wuld be nice with seom HE-AAC and PS-AAC

btw whne its say all levels of AAc does tha include main and ltp ?

That's not what I meant. Obviously those won't supported

It's "the full range of LC AAC, HE AAC, PS AAC and DRM AAC".

What about the container? Are the chips able to read the AAC stream from an .mp4 file, or will the host device be responsible for stripping the container (if it chooses to support it at all)?

Which technologies have you targeted? Do you have layouts for some processes or you just synthesise that from the vhdl core when you get an order? Do you have working samples in silicon yet (asic, not fpga)?

We only have prototype in FPGA currently. We're not at the point of doing a layout yet.

Menno

A bit off-topic but this is another Nero Digital hardware related news:
ESS Technology Adds Nero Digital Support to Its Vibratto II DVD Solutions:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040921/sftu046_1.html

For those not clued in to the jargon, what they are selling is an element of a chip design, not a completed chip ready to drop into a player.

From the web link, it includes hard-wired DRM and only decodes Nero AAC. Does Nero have enough dominance in the encoder market that that you can sell hardware that won't play with other AAC encoders?

For what most people condider to be a digital music player you will stil need to support other formats like mp3, so there will be more to the total design than a core that plays AAC.




Will there be enough market for a single manufacturer to make 3/4 million of a single design version?

Where did you seen that? I only see references to Digital Radio Mondiale...

Oops, wrong DRM