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Ubicom, Inc., a company focused in developing networking and media processor solutions, reportedly has announced the release of networked audio player reference design.

 

The Sunnyvale, California-based company’s reference design runs on the IP7500 family of multimedia processors and is built on the Ubicom Linux BSP with the 2.6.28 SMP kernel using open source packages. Additionally, Ubicom provides reference hardware, design files and fabrication data for the audio design in the form of a CPU development board and a media personality board.

 

The reference design holds can control LCD displays up to 15 inches and 1280 x 720 resolutions, while playing audio and managing the networking stack. The audio player manages DRM using an on-chip hardware acceleration block. UI development and customization tools, including open source tools like DirectFB, SDL and GTK+, allow full-featured UI development.

 

The reference design platform can be used to build complete networked audio solutions, digital media receivers, wireless speakers, and other products. The new design can also play multi-channel audio including 7.1 and 5.1 outputs, eight or more I2S or S/PDIF interfaces, bidirectional audio to enable any device to play content from any other device on the audio network.

 

It can play content on media center PCs and storage devices, sample rate conversion to allow quality playback of any audio content, and bring audio synchronization for multi-room playback, according to the company.

 

“The market for networked audio is gaining momentum due to the evolution of the local digital and online streaming content ecosystem as well as emerging storage and playback devices such that consumers’ lifestyles have adapted to expect this consumption model for audio,” said RK Parthasarathy, vice president of marketing at Ubicom.

 

He added: “The Ubicom networked audio reference design platform brings all these elements together seamlessly and enables a compelling user experience.”

 

The company claims that its IP7000 family of networking and multimedia processors featuring the UBICOM32(TM) 12-way multithreaded architecture can be clocked at frequencies up to 600MHz, which can deliver two to three times the performance at the same frequency compared with a traditional single-threaded RISC processor.