CES 2016: MediaTek announces a series of chipsets for wearables and more

It launched MediaTek MT8581 for Ultra High Definition (4K) Blu-ray players; MT2523 series, for active and fitness smart watches; and MT7697 to bridge Internet of Things (IoT) at home.

MediaTek announced three new systems-on-chip at the ongoing CES 2016. It launched MediaTek MT8581 for Ultra High Definition (4K) Blu-ray players; MT2523 series, for active and fitness smart watches; and MT7697 to bridge Internet of Things (IoT) at home.

The SoCs have been designed to power devices of home entertainment, wearables and those which will act as IoT bridge to connect gadgets and appliances at home. Let us take a look at the SoCs in detail-

MediaTek MT8581

The company says that it is world’s first Ultra-HD 4K Blu-ray player SoC with high dynamic range (HDR). It supports Blu-ray, DVD and CD playback and BD-ROM formats like BD-Live and BonusView. With MT8581, users can both scale up to 4K from DVD and down to a non-4K screen. It features HEVC, H.264 and VP9 4K 60p video decoder for 4K (3840×2160) video content and also MPEG-2, VP8 and VC-1 2K 60p video decoder for legacy 2K (1920×1080 video content).

MT2523 series

MT2523 series offers system-in-package (SiP), which enables GPS, dual-mode bluetooth low energy, and a MIPI-supported high-resolution mobile screen. It combines long battery life, high-quality display technology, and small chip size (41 per cent smaller).

SiP contains a micro controller unit (MCU), that enables wearable devices with lower power consumption and smaller form factors than Android Wear. It also comes with dual-mode bluetooth, GPS and a power management unit (PMU). It also features 2D capabilities of true color, per pixel alpha channel and anti-aliasing fonts, plus 1-bit index color to save memory and computing power. The chip is powered by ARM Cortex M4 processor.

MT7697

MediaTek MT7697 provide integration of applications such as home appliances, home automation, smart gadgets, IoT bridges and cloud connectivity with low power consumption.

It powers WiFi and bluetooth connections for smart gadgets and wearables. It provides flexibility in both BLE and WiFi connectivity for short range as well as long range respectively. Also, a dual-band WiFi version of the chipset- MT7697D – offers 2.4GHz and 5GHz support.