TCI/GI boxes. Can Broadcom make a single chip???????????????????????
techweb.com
Having gotten access to MPEG technology from GI, Broadcom has been quietly expanding into the graphics area to move closer to its ambitious goal of a single-chip set-top solution. According to Nicholas, Broadcom late last fall snatched up a small graphics-chip firm called Azuron Systems (San Jose), a spin-off of interactive-TV-platform company PowerTV Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.)
Headed by Sandy MacInnis, a former vice president of hardware development at PowerTV, Azuron has been working on a new graphics-chip technology for the TV platform. Since working at Kaleida in early 1990s and later at PowerTV, MacInnis has been instrumental in the design of advanced ASICs capable of compositing graphics with video, digital video scaling, alpha blending and anti-aliasing of graphics and video.
As employees of Broadcom, MacInnis and his Azuron team are "designing from the ground up a new graphics chip that Sandy has always wanted to design," said Nicholas.
Broadcom remains confident of mid-1999 delivery of a single-chip set-top solution incorporating its cable modem and QAM receiver, an MPEG audio/video/transport decoder originally developed by GI and an advanced graphics engine to be developed by the former Azuron team.
GI's Fritch, however, said his company has "not named who is going to supply 24-bit graphics capability for the DCT-5000." He added that the graphics silicon could well be a separate chip.
Asked about a second-source silicon supplier for the highly integrated set-top chip solution, GI's Fritch said, "We are not looking for any specific second source right now. We've closely worked with Broadcom for a long time, and we're confident of our joint-development work."
As the share of Broadcom-supplied chip content goes down to 45 percent, there is room for other silicon suppliers to score design wins in GI's set-tops, Fritch said, adding, "We are not ruling anyone out right now."
But he noted that GI needed firm commitments from a few selected chip vendors to offer proven deliverables. "We have a contractual commitment and a development timetable to keep," he said. |
