ZiiLABS Announces ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 Energy-Efficient Processors Optimized for High-Performance Android 3.0 Tablets


ZMS-20 Combines 48 Stemcell Media Processing Cores and Dual-Core 1.5GHz ARM® Cortex™-A9 Processors to Reshape the Landscape for Tablet Computing Quad-Core - ZMS-40 Delivers Aggregated Cortex-A9 Clock Speed of Up to 6GHz and Scales Up Total Performance to 100 Processing Cores

SINGAPORE, May 10, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd, today introduced its most powerful Zii family of energy-efficient media processors, the ZMS-20 and the ZMS-40.

Targeting the up and coming explosive tablet computing markets, the ZMS-20 (with Dual-Core 1.5GHz ARM® Cortex™-A9 Processors) and ZMS-40 (with Quad-Core 1.5GHz ARM® Cortex™-A9 Processors), besides having more than generous ARM® processing power, are turbo-charged by an array of up to 96 Stemcell media processing cores to give an incredible performance of up to 100 processor cores, previously unheard of in the handheld mobile device markets!

Engineered for the high-resolution tablet computing markets, the ZMS-20 combines ZiiLABS' 48 Stemcell media processing cores with dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore™ processors with Neon™ to deliver stunning 1080p high profile video playback, immersive OpenGL® ES 2.0 3D graphics, HD video calling and a rich desktop browsing experience including Adobe® Flash Player®.

With multi-core application acceleration and dynamic power management for longer battery life, the ZMS-20 delivers the efficient and high-performance platform required for the next generation of Android™ 3.0 based devices and beyond.

"Designed to increase application performance by 4X over the ZMS-08 processor, the ZMS-20 was specifically engineered to meet the performance and power efficiency requirements of high-resolution Android tablets more effectively than any other processor on the market," said Hock Leow, President of ZiiLABS. "The ZMS-08 established our leadership position for High Profile H.264 playback and the ZMS-20 takes that to the next level by adding dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores plus a host of new features such as DDR3 and LPDDR2 support, HDMI 1.4 and OpenCL®.

"We are targeting this amazing family of ZMS-20 and the ZMS-40 Zii Stemcell media processors dead-on the explosive tablet computing market.  The competitively priced ZMS-20, and the ZMS-40 with its quad Cortex-A9 cores will herald a new generation of low-cost, low-power yet high-performance tablets, mobile thin clients for cloud computing and other embedded appliances for the post-PC era," said Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and CEO of Creative Technology Ltd. 

"The design and development of ZMS-40 is done, we will unleash it to ride on the up and coming new wave of tablet computing revolution. The scalable ZMS-40 will lead the way to show the world that tablet computing can be truly effective and without any compromise. With the ZMS-40, we will be able to bring the performances of tablets or other handheld devices to rival notebooks and even desktop PCs." Sim added.

"As consumer demand for smarter connected devices increases, so does the industry's requirement for low-power, high performance semiconductor solutions," commented Eric Schorn, Vice President Marketing, Processor Division, ARM. "The combination of Cortex-A9 processors incorporating ARM NEON and TrustZone® technologies provides the multicore technology to drive the latest Android tablets and ensure a high-quality user experience."

Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablets and associated design-kits based on the ZMS-20 will be showcased at the ZiiLABS suite (Grand Hyatt Hotel Taipei, Grand Room, #1137) in Taipei, Taiwan between 31 May and 4 June at the Computex 2011 tradeshow.

  • Dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores with Neon
  • ZiiLABS flexible Stemcell media processing capabilities Low-energy SIMD architecture for high performance media acceleration 48 x 32-bit floating point media processing cores for 26GFlops of compute High Profile H.264 video playback at 1080p@30fps Wide range of accelerated video codecs including H.264, VC1 and VP8 High-definition, low-latency video conferencing Optimised OpenGL ES 2.0 for robust 3D graphics acceleration and application compatibility
  • Accelerated OpenCL 1.1 (desktop profile) integrated into Android NDK
  • High Dynamic Range (HDR) Image Processing
  • High-quality Text-to-Speech and Voice Recognition
  • 150 MPixel/sec image processing
  • Adobe Flash 10 acceleration
  • Integrated HDMI 1.4 with 3D stereo support
  • 1GB addressable memory DDR2/3 at 533 MHz for low cost LPDDR2 for maximum memory bandwidth and low-power 64-bit wide memory bus
  • Quad independent video controllers supporting 24-bit displays and cameras
  • 3V3 and 1V8 I/O's reduce peripheral power consumption
  • Dual USB 2.0 HS OTG (Host/Peripheral) controllers with PHY for low system cost
  • Three independent SDIO/MMC controllers
  • Extended battery life with robust Dynamic Power Management and Instantaneous On
  • Xtreme Fidelity™ X-Fi audio effects
  • Enhanced Security: 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and TrustZone®

The ZMS-20 is sampling now to select customers and is scheduled for volume shipment to customers in the 3rd quarter of 2011.  Detailed specifications of the ZMS-40 will be announced later. Visit ZiiLABS suite (Grand Hyatt Hotel Taipei, Grand Room, #1137) at the Computex 2011 tradeshow to find out more.

ZiiLABS' high-quality OEM-ready reference platforms combine all the hardware, software and integration required to enable ODMs to rapidly deliver customized solutions to meet the growing demand for next-generation Android-based tablets.

ZiiLABS is a leader in media-rich application processors, hardware platforms and advanced middleware. Its products enable OEMs, ODMs, System Integrators and Software Developers to deliver industry-leading devices across a broad range of consumer electronics and embedded markets.  Originally founded in 1994 as 3DLABS, the company re-branded and joined with the Personal Digital Entertainment group of Creative Technology to form ZiiLABS in January 2009.  ZiiLABS with over 800 R&D engineers today has invested US$1 billion and 10,000 man-years in media processing solutions and has offices in the UK, China, USA and Singapore.  Learn more about ZiiLABS at: www.ziilabs.com

USA and Canada                                    Asia Pacific                                   Europe
Phil O'Shaughnessy                               Wynne Leong                               Tim Lewis
Tel +1 408 546 6773                             Tel +65 6895 4120                      Tel +44 1784 476 651
poshaughnessy@creativelabs.com       wynne.leong@ctl.creative.com    tim.lewis@ZiiLABS.com

Images and Videos accompanying this release can be downloaded from: www.ziilabs.com/downloads

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