Article from Semiconductor Times: Mavrix Startup Profiles

Mavrix Technology was founded in February 2005 to develop SoCs for the Mobile Digital TV (MDTV) market. The founders provided seed founding, and the company secured $ 6.6 millions in Series A funding from Action Capital, the VC arm of Action Semiconductor in China. Series B funding will be sought toward the end of 2007.

The company is headquartered in Newport Beach, CA with 16 employees. The Shanghai subsidiary, Shanghai Mavrix Electronics, is focused on providing highly integrated MDTV solutions to the Chinese multimedia mobile phone market.

Today, companies tend to partition multimedia functionality into a digital media processor for audio/video processing and a mixed-signal device that integrates the RF front-end and the digital demodulator. Based on prior experiences, Mavrix believes this is the wrong approach for several reasons. Analog functionality doesn’t scale with process geometries and expensive DSM processes and mask-sets are wasted on large geometry analog functions. More importantly, analog functions typically have lower yields, leading to the loss of perfectly good, high-yield digital functionality because of a small analog block.

Furthermore, today’s application processors bundled with baseband chipsets can handle mp3 or simple jpeg images, but do not have the horsepower to handle H.264 at 30fps, a market gap that Mavrix believes will persist for five years or so.

To address this problem, Mavrix has chosen to integrate all digital functionality, including the media processor and demodulator, into one high yield digital device, leaving the RF functionality to specialized multi-mode RF front-ends, which are available from numerous vendors. This also allows the front-end to be fabricated in the most optimal process, whether it is CMOS, SiGe, or something else. Bundling the media processor with the demodulator also allows the video buffer memory requirements.

The first instantiation of this philosophy is the MV6600, a low-power terrestrial DAB/DMB solution that provides baseband demodulation, video, and audio decoding. The MV6600 can receive and decode T-DMB TV broadcast carrying H.264 video and MPEG-4 BSAC as well as AAC audio formats. In addition, the MV6600 can receive and decode various audio standards such as MPEG-2 Layer II used in DAB standard as well as MP3 format.

With its built-in demodulation and decoding capabilities, and various interfaces such as SDRAM, Flash, I2C, SPI, I2S, LCD, and video outputs in s single core, the MV6600 provides a complete T-DMD solution with few additional components. The MV6600 also provides tuner control, video/audio output management, and data service filtering.

Applications include T-DMB enabled mobile phones, stand-alone T-DMB receivers, and other convergence devices such as portable media players, PDAs, and navigation systems.

To gain a quick time-to-market advantage, Mavrix has licenced Imagination Technologies’ mobile TV demodulation IP platform, which provides the widest range of multi-standard support for Mobile TV, including, “One Seg” ISDB-T, DVB-H, Enhanced Packet Mode DAB-IP and T-DMB. Built around Imagination’s UCC Mobile (Universal Communications Core) signal processor, which provides PHY layer demodulation, the platform also integrates fixed hardware functions to ensure optimum die area, power dissipation and performance.

Future devices will add additional multimedia modes, including China’s STiMi (Satellite Terrestrial Interactive Multi-service Infrastructure) mobile technology. Other plans included adding 3D graphics functionality and GPS application processor hooks. To reduce cost and increase performance in the future, Mavrix also plans to replace the Imagination demodulator core with an in –house developed demodulator core and proprietary algorithms.

MV6600 tape-out is scheduled for January 2007 and the device will be fabricated by UMC in 0.13u CMOS. The company is already engaged with customers in China who will benefit from a turnkey solution.

Zhenyu Zhou, Ph.D., founder, President and CEO (previously an SVP at ESS via the acquisition of NetRidium Communications, where he served as president and chairman)

4340 Von Karman Ave. Suite 320
Newport Beach, CA  92660
Tel:949.756.8898
Fax:949.756.8999
www.mavrixtech.com

(http://www.mavrixtech.com/chinese/news_events/Ariticle_from_Semiconductor_Times_Mavrix_Technology_Stratup_Profiles.pdf)