It’s been only a month that we reported about the “latest” DVD-ROM generation, and today Philips is the first company to expand the horizon anew. Philips Semiconductors today announced the world’s first single-chip solution for 12x DVD-ROM drives. In addition to high-speed DVD performance, the highly-integrated SAA7811 supports 56x CD-ROM access, making it ideal for use in high-end CD/DVD combination drives.

Packaged in a single 208-lead quad flat pack, the SAA7811 combines a channel decoder, block decoder, servo control and microcontroller functions. Even in lower speed drives, this level of functionality previously required the use of several ICs. Built-in multimedia functions include playback of audio CDs at speeds greater than 1x using a DRAM buffer, IEC 60958 digital audio interfacing, and audio playback via an on-chip DAC with a 4x over-sampling filter and digitally controlled volume/muting.

Additionally, the host interface supports ATA/ATA-2 PIO and ATA/ATAPI-4 Ultra-DMA data transfer modes, which can also be configured as a generic DMA interface for special applications. The spindle motor control for Constant Angular Velocity (CAV), Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) and pseudo-CLV modes enables the SAA7811 to read a wide range of disk formats, including CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM and DVD-Video.

Now let’s see how long it will take until the first manufacturer actually announces the first 12x drive.