Chrontel Equalizer Chips Offer ‘Eye-Opening’ Performance for
HDMI™ and DisplayPort™ Cables and High-Speed Circuit Boards

Low-cost Passive Device Family Improves Giga-bit Transmission
Over Copper Interconnects and FR4 Backplanes

SAN JOSE, CA (20 January, 2009) - Chrontel, Inc., (www.chrontel.com) a leading provider of video interface technologies, today announced a new series of CH6000 passive equalizer devices designed to enhance performance of high data-rate transmission media. CH6000 devices can compensate for transmission losses that plague popular interconnects at data rates up to 5 Gbps. These new devices are ideally suited for HDMI, DisplayPort and other high-speed cabling, as well as for FR4 printed circuit boards (PCBs) used as backplane system interconnects.

The copper used as a transmission medium in cables, and the FR4 material used as an insulator in PCBs, act like low-pass filters that attenuate high frequency components of a high-speed digital signal. This attenuation introduces inter-symbol interference (ISI) at giga-bit data rates—closing the symbol “eye” that defines the data transmission. CH6000 devices are passive network high-pass filters that create an inverse channel response, which counteracts the low-pass characteristics inherent in copper and FR4. By incorporating a CH6000 device, the transmission medium achieves an essentially flat frequency response over the entire giga-bit frequency spectrum required for HDMI, DisplayPort and other high-speed protocols.

"With the proliferation of HDMI, DisplayPort and other high data-rate protocols, which are essential for digital video transmission and networking, the physical limitations of copper connections are increasingly revealed," said Dr. David Soo, Chrontel President and CEO. "Our customers needed a very low-cost way to improve transmission performance, without adding complexity to their PC and CE systems. Hundreds of millions of cables and PCBs produced annually can benefit from the incorporation of passive equalization technology."

CH6000 devices are passive equalizers that require no power or ground connections. They can be placed anywhere in the data path, providing great flexibility in routing and placement design. The devices are protocol independent, offering bi-directional operation and loss compensation for any differential signal.
 

Pricing and Availability

Chrontel CH6000 samples are currently available, and production volumes will be available in March 2009. CH6000 devices are available in a 4-pin LFCSP/LPCC packages and are priced at $0.50 in 10,000 piece quantities.

Additional information about all Chrontel products can be found on the web at

http://www.chrontel.com/products/.

About Chrontel, Inc.

Founded in 1986, privately held Chrontel is a leading supplier of video interface ICs and technologies to computer manufacturers worldwide. The company's innovations include the world's first VGA-to-TV encoder. Chrontel video display chips are incorporated into reference designs offered by many microprocessor and graphics processor vendors. The company currently offers the industry's most complete product line of video interface ICs for notebook and desktop computers, and its components can be found in PCs sold by dozens of leading manufacturers. Additional information about Chrontel can be found on its website: www.chrontel.com .

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