More on Conexant, the Rockwell spinoff's settop chip. No Analog encoder, softmodem. Not a set top on a single chip............
eet.com
Conexant aims CPU/decoder ICs at satellite set-tops
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(03/17/99, 3:12 p.m. EDT)
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Conexant Systems Inc. will make its first foray into the set-top decoder market with the launch of two versions of its CPU/decoder ICs. Both the CN8600AVD and CD8610AVD are highly integrated solutions that are compliant with the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standard, and combine a 32-bit, 133-Mips ARM940T processor, a graphics coprocessor and an MPEG-2 audio and video decoder/transport demux core on a single chip. The devices have an additional capability of Dolby Digital audio decoding.
Eric Rayel, Conexant's senior product line manager, described the CPU/decoder chips as "a central piece for a set-top, designed for entry and midrange-level satellite, cable and MMDS decoder box."
Conexant, formerly Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, already has an arsenal of front-end communication chips for set-tops, including a QPSK demodulator chip for satellite decoders and a QAM chip for cable set-tops. Although the company is new to the audio/video decoder set-top IC market, "we are not necessarily new to our customers," Rayel said.
Conexant licensed OpenTV's hardware porting kit and developed a complete set of set-top box drivers along with an OpenTV control task, OpenTV applications, a kernel adaptation layer and a real-time operating system board support package. By porting the complete software package to its hardware platform, Rayel said, "we believe that this allows our OEMs to bypass the whole set-top integration phase."
Besides OpenTV, Conexant plans to port its hardware to other middleware run-time engines including Media Highway developed by Canal Plus and DTV Navigator designed by NCI.
The primary target is an "upgraded" satellite set-top market, as well as the two-way cable market in Europe, said Rayel. Most digital satellite service providers now offer no interactivity, except for electronic program guides, and require no distinct middleware or back-channel capability. Later this year, however, service providers such as Echostar, News Corp.'s BSkyB, or DirecTV are expected to launch second-generation services capable of limited two-way communication via a back channel, offering a virtual Web browser and a fixed set of interactive services.
Indeed, Conexant's new silicon appears to have some distinct advantages for that particular market. First, its embedded processor is capable of host-based signal-processing algorithms for functions such as modem connectivity, imaging and audio communications. Second, the chips cut the total system bill-of-material costs for a set-top to about $100, by integrating many of the common set-top peripheral port controllers and by using an advanced unified memory architecture. The CN8600/8610AVD are capable of offering software modem connectivity at speeds ranging from 2,400 baud to V.32.
Conexant said it now has the most highly integrated set-top chip solution on the market, on par with leading A/V decoder vendors STMicroelectronics and C-Cube Microsystems.
Unlike the latest set-top silicon from STM, Conexant's solutions do not integrate a TV encoder block. But Rayel pointed out that "a TV encoder chip today is one of the lowest-cost function ICs. We believe it's more important to offer a software modem in microcode running on ARM." Also, he said, Conexant chips include all the physical peripheral I/Os, including smart-card and IR interfaces, serial port and others.
A unified memory architecture allows a single flexible, 32-bit-wide 100-MHz memory system — using standard SDRAM — to support all a system's DRAM requirements. A minimum of 4 Mbytes satisfies entry-level applications. Most set-top silicon allocates 2 Mbytes of DRAM for decoding audio/video streams, and requires a separate 2 to 4 Mbytes for system program memory. Rayel argued that those two chunks of memory often are underutilized. By sharing memory, "we believe that system vendors can build a whole set-top system with a minimum of 4 Mbytes instead of 6."
Manufactured on a 0.25-micron process, the CN8600AVD has a sample price of $29 in lots of 100,000. Conexant will sample the CM8610AVD in the second quarter at $31 in volume.
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