Frontier Silicon has won the TechCon product of the year for its low cost Venice 5 DAB module, a product that is significantly boosting the uptake of digital radio listening by enabling radio manufacturers to produce DAB receivers for under $30. The result of the prestigious award was announced on the 9 July 2007 at TechCon, an annual one-day conference for technical leaders in the radio industry organised by the Radio Academy at Cambridge in the UK.
"It's a great honour to win this award, as voted for by the members of the Radio Academy - effectively the who's who of the UK radio industry," said Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon. "The UK market is seeing a big increase in the availability of low-cost radios from leading electronics retailers and supermarkets, offering consumers a great deal on digital radio. Venice 5 is playing an important part in driving the increased penetration of DAB in the UK and beyond."
Measuring only 52 x 40 mm, Venice 5 is 50 percent smaller than previous Venice modules - the world's best selling family of modules, with nearly five million already deployed in digital radios worldwide. This reduced size gives manufacturers greater design flexibility for DAB radios and audio systems. As well as being low cost itself, the Venice module is very tightly integrated, meaning that the cost of the external components required to make a full kitchen/clock radio can be as low as $5.
Other key advantages of Venice 5 are that it achieves a battery life of over 170 hours (using six D cells) which is a huge jump in performance when compared to the typical figure of around 24 hours. It also possesses 640 Kbytes of on-chip RAM, enabling functions like FM, clocks, alarms, and timers without the need for additional memory, further reducing total system cost. Additionally, Venice 5 can be customised through software, allowing manufacturers to deliver a differentiated product in a very short timeframe and introduce new products to the market more quickly.
Frontier Silicon Limited
