GI switches chip vendors for the DCT-5000 CPU.......................
mediacentral.com
GI Switches Chips For DCT-5000
Move Could Delay Set-Top Launch
By Jim Barthold
General Instrument Corp. has switched to an NEC USA Inc. MIPS microprocessor in its DCT-5000 advanced digital set-tops, supplanting an earlier product supplied by Quantum Effect Design (QED) Inc.
GI chose the MIPS RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture over more conventional, more expensive CISC (complex instruction set computer) versions last spring, and announced QED as the first supplier.
"One of the benefits of using the MIPS architecture is we have a variety of chip vendors and we can always go for the best cost and performance," said Denton Kanouff, VP-marketing for GI's digital network systems.
That should be QED, responded Rick Kepple, QED's VP-marketing.
"This may simply boil down to big company, little company," said Kepple. "QED is a start-up."
GI, he said, may be making a "purchasing-based decision versus an engineering-based decision."
Kepple alleged that the NEC chip is not production-ready and that by changing microprocessors GI could delay mid-year DCT-5000 launch.
"You can't go around and re-compile your code to another processor," he argued.
Kanouff disputed both claims.
"We've been using their (NEC) chips in the development platforms we've been providing to software vendors since the summer," he said. "I can show it to you on a board in a DCT-5000. That chip is available."
After making a fuss about selecting QED over expected front-runner Intel Corp., GI was relatively quiet in its NEC switch.
"To be honest, we just wanted to get away from making an announcement every time we changed a component," Kanouff said. "I don't know how many hundreds of components we have in the set-top, but every guy that makes something in there wants to do a press release."
Kepple hopes there will be yet another QED-GI press release.
"We don't consider this a lost situation, we consider this a win for MIPS and we think we're going to help them get into production with our (processor) in the second quarter, if they hold to that schedule," he said.
When available, the DCT-5000 will give consumers another way to burn money a little faster by inserting their Visa cards into a smart card slot on the front of the box.
By using the interface between the set-top and the Visa Open Platform, Visa International customers would be able to transact a number of commerce applications.
"They (Visa) want to push more of the applications for a smart card by downloading value, downloading coupons," said Kanouff.
"You log on through some interactive service on the market and you can download that to the Visa smart card and go and use it at a checkout at the store."
(December 14, 1998)
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