Zilog and Gulbransen Partner to Offer Wave Synthesis Solution for Multimedia PC Market.CAMPBELL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1996--Combining Zilog's DSP technology with Gulbransen's wave synthesis software, Zilog Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :ZLG) and Gulbransen today announced the Z89340, a programmable DSP audio chip solution, offering cost-effective, professional-level quality sound for PC mother boards, add-on cards, musical instruments, and general MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface (music, hardware, protocol, file format) Musical Instrument Digital Interface - (MIDI /mi'-dee/, /mee'-dee/) A hardware specification and protocol used to communicate note and effect information between synthesisers, computers, music keyboards, controllers, and other electronic ) sound modules. "The Gulbransen wave synthesis technology produces a much richer quality sound of up to 128 simultaneous voices, compared to the 32 voice capability of the current FM synthesis technique," said Walter Croce, director for DSP products at Zilog. "It offers a greater range of effects such as downloadable samples, reverb, 3D localization and spatialization, chorus, flanging Flanging is a time-based audio effect that occurs when two identical signals are mixed together, but with one signal time-delayed by a small and gradually changing amount, usually smaller than 20 ms (milliseconds). , echo, pan, tremolo tremolo (trem´  lō),n an irregular and exaggerated speech pattern that may be the symptom of an emotional disturbance or of various and vibrato." The Z89340, coupled with a stereo audio CODEC, is all the electronics required to design a complete card solution. The digital sound/audio generator chip integrates a mixer, wavetable sound synthesizer and FM emulator, resulting in reduced board space and component count. The device also features an ISA bus interface, a joystick controller, and a 64-channel DMA bus master. "We were impressed with Zilog's manufacturing expertise," said Dave Starkey, Gulbransen's senior vice president of engineering. "Access to Zilog's fab and layout tools has allowed Gulbransen to utilize its twelve years of wavetable synthesis experience to produce a musical instrument synthesizer second to none." The Z89340 device is optimized for wavetable synthesis, supporting 8- and 16-bit linear PCM samples and 4- and 8-bit ADPCM (Adaptive Differential PCM) A widely used variation of PCM that codes the difference between sample points like differential PCM (DPCM), but can also dynamically switch the coding scale to compensate for variations in amplitude and frequency. . The Z89340 solution is Sound Blaster and OPL register compatible so that the consumer can run existing applications. The chip includes a game port, CD-ROM CD-ROM: see compact disc. CD-ROM in full compact disc read-only memory Type of computer storage medium that is read optically (e.g., by a laser). interface, ISA bus interface, and a MPU401-compatible UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) The electronic circuit that makes up the serial port. Also known as "universal serial asynchronous receiver transmitter" (USART), it converts parallel bytes from the CPU into serial bits for transmission, and vice . For fast system development, a hardware reference design is available which includes a board layout, software drivers and a bill of materials The list of components that make up a system. For example, a bill of materials for a house would include the cement block, lumber, shingles, doors, windows, plumbing, electric, heating and so on. . The Z89340 is available in 160-pin QFP and PLCC (Plastic Leaded Chip Carrier) A plastic, square, surface mount chip package that contains leads on all four sides. The leads (pins) extend down and back under and into tiny indentations in the housing. See chip package. packages for $30.00 in 20K quantities. Zilog is an innovator in the development, design and manufacture of application specific standard products (ASSPs) for the data communications, peripherals and consumer products markets. ASSPs are very large scale integrated circuits designed for a particular market application rather than a single customer. The company utilizes its Superintegration design methodology to combine cores and cells from the company's extensive library of customer-familiar microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory and logic circuits to meet the design, cost and time-to-market requirements of its customers. Zilog has its headquarters in Campbell and had 1995 revenues of $265.1 million. It employs approximately 1,575 people and has 26 direct sales offices and more than 120 distributor and rep locations worldwide. -0- Note to Editors: Superintegration is a trademark of Zilog Inc. CONTACT: Zilog Inc. Chris Bradley, 408/370-8246 or Gulbransen Dave Starkey, 619/296-5760 |
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