Analog Devices aims eMedia platform squarely at consumer
By Junko Yoshida, EE Times
May 12, 2003 (10:51 a.m. EST)
URL: eetimes.com
Paris - As audio and video algorithms proliferate in digital consumer boxes, Analog Devices Inc. is responding with the eMedia Platform family of Blackfin programmable digital signal processors and accompanying software. The move targets set-top boxes, DVD players, portable entertainment devices and other consumer markets where ADI has had little presence.
The platform will pit the Norwood, Mass., company against such consumer system-on-chip leaders as STMicroelectronics and LSI Logic, and against such DSP suppliers as Texas Instruments and Equator Technologies, which are leading a push from ASICs to DSP solutions in the consumer world.
ADI's first single-chip Blackfin eMedia Platform device, the ADSP-BF532eM10, is capable of decoding D1-resolution DVD content at 30 frames per second with full support for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Video 9 (WMV9). Comparing the device with TI's C55-based DSP, John Croteau, general manager of ADI's Media Platform and Services Group, said, "We are offering our Blackfin-based processor at the same price as our competitor's DSP, with twice as much performance at two-thirds less power consumption."
But ADI faces an uphill battle in the consumer market. Many leading consumer electronics companies have already invested in systems-on-chip based on favored silicon platforms. Often these SoCs include an embedded DSP or VLIW engine, offering some of the flexibility and programmability required for next-generation systems.
Rather than try to unseat an incumbent SoC supplier, ADI plans to pitch its eMedia Platform processor as "a companion processor" to ASICs that are already a part of such consumer systems as DVD players, Croteau said.
Route to differentiation
Leading Japanese consumer electronics companies, pressured to compete against $70 DVD players from suppliers in Taiwan and China, are scrambling to differentiate their products by adding features like WMV9, said Scot Robertson, ADI's product-marketing manager. "But it's too much to add a $40 programmable processor to a $150 DVD player. With a Blackfin-based IC, priced at $11.95, you can design a $100 DVD player with much more programmability."
ADI styles its companion chip as a Trojan horse that will allow it to go deeper into the consumer market in the future. Once the device is designed into a mainstream digital entertainment system, consumer OEMs will see that "there is nothing our Blackfin eMedia Platform processors can't do" compared with an SoC, Croteau said. ADI hopes to move manufacturers away from multicore, multiarchitecture approaches to a single-architecture Blackfin system, he said.
A combination of financial and time pressure makes it impossible for leading consumer electronics manufacturers to design multiple ASICs for every new product, so the need for programmability is paramount, suppliers said.
But the choice of an SoC or an off-the-shelf DSP that works with an existing RISC processor will depend on "time-to-market and your own company's religion," said Will Strauss, president of DSP consultancy Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.). "In my opinion, the combo RISC-DSP approach is ideal for many applications that require high-level protocols or rich GUI-based operating systems that are written in C, favoring the RISC [device], and DSP-centric algorithms like WMV9, favoring the DSP," he said. The argument then boils down to "whether they should be on the same silicon or separate chips," Strauss said.
With little ASIC experience and no licensable DSP cores, ADI may have to work hard on system OEMs looking for an integrated one-chip solution.
LSI Logic Corp., for instance, believes it offers the best of both worlds with solutions ranging "from licensable DSP cores to ASICs to complete standard products for consumer applications," said Tuan Dao, vice president of the DSP Products Division at LSI Logic (Milpitas, Calif.).
Many SoCs on the market-including LSI Logic's Ziva and Domino chip families-include one or two DSPs for audio processing. End products that include a separate, programmable DSP are typically "high-end, low-volume emerging products," said Tim Vehling, senior director of marketing for consumer products at LSI Logic. "As the market takes off, they are most likely to migrate to integrated SoCs."
Pick your battle,/b>
As far as supporting new algorithms, programmable DSPs can be enabled more quickly than SoCs, suppliers said. For example, Texas Instruments, Equator and ADI have publicly demonstrated their ability to decode WMV9.
But Analog Devices may need to pick its battles carefully for the eMedia Platform family. Michelle Abraham, senior market analyst at In-Stat/MDR (Scottsdale, Ariz.), said cable and satellite providers will not pay extra for a box to receive content developed by others. Although there is mild interest in adding WMV9 decoding capability to DVD players, Abraham predicted that programmable processors will be most effective in Internet Protocol/DSL set-tops "because the box could then be easily customized to the compression format the provider desires."
For its part, TI has since the mid-1990s carefully tailored its DSP solutions for a host of consumer product segments ranging from cell phones, digital cameras and portable MP3 players to set-tops and personal video recorders. "The world is moving from MPEG-2 to 'don't know what to decode,' " said Jean-Marc Charpentier, business development manager at TI France. "The key is to build a future-proof platform, while fine-tuning codes and feature sets for different applications." |
