HDMI 2.0 Due Mid-Year, Volume Chips in 2014, Silicon Image Says
The long-awaited HDMI 2.0 spec with support for 4K video at 60 Hz likely will be available by mid-year, with the first 2.0-compliant chips expected to reach volume production in 2014, Silicon Image Chief Financial Officer Noland Granberry said Thursday at the Wedbush investor conference in New York.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The new HDMI spec had been expected to be released by CES, but with Apple, a long-time DisplayPort supporter, joining the HDMI Forum, the complexion of the negotiations changed, industry officials have said. Much of the discussions on HDMI 2.0 have centered on speed and power consumption requirements for 4K video, Granberry said. Silicon Image is a major supplier of HDMI chips.
"There have been a number of issues” involved in setting the HDMI 2.0 standard, Granberry said. “There are a number of things regarding power consumption and how that might be used and then there are speed requirements in terms of how much is necessary because that changes the dynamics in terms of what you can do.” Whether the HDMI 2.0 spec will be compatible with DisplayPort hasn’t been decided, Granberry said.
With 1,500 adopters, the company’s HDMI business is expected to stabilize this year after new-product revenue declined in 2012, Granberry said. The downturn in new-product revenue was partly offset by increases in licensing and royalty revenue, Granberry said. Silicon Image’s CE-related revenue, which is closely aligned with the HDMI business, slipped to $62.2 million in 2012 from $87.9 million a year earlier, while licensing revenue, which also includes royalty from the Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) standard, rose to $48.8 million from $46.7 million. HDMI has “matured and is evolving” and the new spec should bring “additional change” that could help drive new product revenue,” Granberry said.
Silicon Image has seen its strongest growth in mobile, Granberry said. Silicon Image’s mobile revenue, derived largely from its MHL connectors in smartphones, tablets and TVs, jumped to $120.9 in 2012 from $65.7 million a year earlier. Mobile accounted for 59.4 percent of Silicon Image’s $203.4 million in revenue in 2012, up from 37.8 percent a year earlier. With Silicon Image shifting more focus to mobile, MHL unit shipments could outstrip those of HDMI within “a couple years,” Granberry said. New MHL specs are due this year to address a broader set of applications, including automotive. MHL has gained 190 adopters and has been installed in more than 220 million products since being released in 2010. Silicon Image expects MHL to be installed in 30 percent of smartphones and TVs this year, up from 20 percent in 2012, Granberry said.
Silicon Image’s WirelessHD technology is expected to land two design wins in smartphones that will generate “some revenue” by late this year. Its WirelessHD products include the UltraGig 6400 transmitter, which combines a 60 GHz transceiver with a baseband processor and embedded antenna array. The chip builds on the WirelessHD technology that Silicon Image acquired when it bought Sibeam in 2011. WirelessHD uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with adaptive beam-forming to deliver data and in the past has been built into TVs and adapters. WirelessHD has accounted for $2 million to $3 million in annual revenue for Silicon Image and will provide “a little more than that” this year, Granberry said. The WirelessHD design wins in smartphones will greatly increase the business, he said. Granberry didn’t identify the potential customers for the UltraGig 6400, but Silicon Image is “talking to the same” MHL and HDMI customers “to help drive this business,” Granberry said. Silicon Image’s sales to Samsung, which has deployed MHL and HDMI chips, were 35 percent of its 2012 total revenue, up from 23.4 percent a year earlier, the company said in its 10-K report at the SEC. The UltraGig 6400 is expected to be priced at more than $10 in volume orders.
Silicon Image still holds out hope for the success of WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio Association) technology despite having taken a $7.5 million writeoff last year on its investment in WiSA chip designer Summit Semiconductor, Granberry said. Silicon continues to maintain its 17.5 percent stake in Summit. “We are still working to see how we can turn out something,” Granberry said of WiSA. Summit has “progressed some but it still has some work to do” in landing design wins, he said. Summit has “product ready now” and it’s a question of when those will “actually start shipping” in products and “get enough volume to make a business,” Granberry said.