ISD (Information Storage Devices, Inc.) announced the ISD1606, a high quality, single chip, segmentable-message, audio record/playback solution with user selectable durations from 4.8 to 9.6 seconds. The ISD1606 also adds an on-chip beep tone generator and LED drivers which enable the creation of unique user interface options as well as additional audio and visual effects. The ISD1606 microchip offers ChipCorder high quality sound reproduction for applications in the consumer electronics, toy, novelty and promotional markets.

"Toy manufacturers, and manufacturers of portable electronics, are constantly looking for ways to differentiate each new product," said Phillip Pyo, ISD's director of product marketing. "The addition of visual and special sound effects give them that design flexibility."

The ISD1606

The ISD1606 records and plays back high quality voice and audio and contains a beep tone generator and LED drivers to provide a customizable user interface. It also has an auxiliary input, giving it the ability to pass through and amplify or mix with the internal recording other sound effects generated from external devices. Record and playback duration is variable from 4.8 to 9.6 seconds set by the user via an external resistor control. This allows special "warping" of the recorded material and/or flexibility in sound quality and duration. The overall recording space can be divided into two equal segments to allow single or dual message storage and playback. In addition, special internal circuitry enables a lower system cost by minimizing the need for external components.

ISD ChipCorder Product Line

ISD ChipCorder products provide nonvolatile single-chip record and playback solutions, offering customers high-quality, low-power, cost-effective and simple-to-use products for a variety of communications, consumer and industrial applications. ChipCorder products utilize ISD's proprietary "multilevel" storage methodology in which one of more than 250 distinct voltage levels is precisely stored per memory cell. This technology enables voice and audio signals to be stored directly, in analog or digital form, into EEPROM and FLASH memory cells, providing up to eight times more storage space for any given memory.

ChipCorder technology has been incorporated into hundreds of products, including cellular phones, pagers, personal voice organizers, telephone answering devices, voice "message pads," games, toys, interactive books, alarms, point-of-sale displays, novelty items and personalized gifts. It is also found in industrial announcement/annunciator systems, instrumentation, automotive and building security systems.

ISD has been an innovator in voice storage products offering viable, lower-cost alternatives to digital storage techniques. The company has gradually increased the storage times of the available products and have done this by continually improving its algorithms and processing and then by inventing multi-level storage within the same cell; one would like to think that it was that development that gave Intel the idea of multi-level Flash memory devices. The problems associated with analog storage at multiple levels -- particularly with noise -- have been mostly overcome over the last eighteen months, and this product is a further development opening up the core technology to even larger, wider markets at a price level that will tempt even more designers to include audio in their products.

I would expect to see the ISD1606 in some major quantities of consumer products and toys, especially upscale toys. The ability to both record, playback and mix signals will allow the imagination of marketeers to run riot in innovating differences between products and creating optical as well as audio effects. That market has, until now, been controlled by voice sensor products and some extremely crude playback technologies. This is an extremely interesting development which I believe should make ISD some solid bottom line, something they have been needing. In production this month the ISD1606 will be priced at $0.98 in die form for 10,000-piece lots.