12/11/99 - ATI Tech builds digital video decoder
Dec. 10, 1999 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- TORONTO - Two highly
integrated set-top-box transport demux-video-graphics controllers from ATI Technologies Inc. will
premiere this week at the Western Cable Show in Los Angeles.
Called Rage SDTV and Rage HDTV, both controllers integrate in one chip a transport demux, a
rich set of 2-D and 3-D graphics features and either a standard-definition or high-definition digital
video decoding capability.
The Rage HDTV chip, incorporated with an MPEG-2 Main Profile @ High Level decoder, is
capable of decoding and displaying video images in all 18 video formats specified by the
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). "This is an all-format, all-conversion
decoder," said Dan Eiref, ATI's director of marketing.
Rage SDTV is identical to Rage HDTV, except that its decoding capability is limited to MPEG-2
Main Profile @ Main Level for decoding standard-definition TV. The chip was designed for the
Digital Video Broadcast (DVB)-standards-based market.
ATI has been making steady inroads in the set-top-box market by leveraging the company's
expertise in 2-D, 3-D graphics controllers for the PC market. The company said that it has sold
more than 50 million units of its 2-D, 3-D graphics engine for PC OEMs in the last few years.
ATI's 3-D graphics chip has also been designed into General Instruments' advanced digital
set-top box, called DCT-5000. In the last six months alone, said Erief, "we have shipped more
than a million chips to GI."
By developing both Rage HDTV and SDTV, ATI has com-mitted to staying on top of the digital
set-top-box market. The Rage 128 Pro chip has an on-chip inverse discrete-cosine-transform
(DCT) engine designed to offload some of the HDTV de-coding functions from the CPU.
Eiref noted that Rage HDTV was developed not only for consumer electronics manufacturers
looking for terrestrial and satellite high-definition TV solutions, but also to meet with the request
by cable operators in the United States, which are clamoring for an HDTV solution at a
reasonably low cost.
Both new controllers, made with a 0.25-micron process in Taiwan by UMC and TSMC, are being
shipped in sample quantities with volume production slated for early next year. Rage HDTV is
priced at $30 and Rage SDTV at $25 in units of 100,000.
Though competitors such as TeraLogic, Motorola and Broadcom are also vying for set-top-box
business with their own HDTV-SDTV decoder chips, "There is no clear leader on the market
yet," said Eiref, adding that no other chip vendor's 2-D, 3-D part has graphics capabilities
boasting performance as high as that of ATI's and "none has an experience of building their
chips in millions of volume like we've done, either."
By integrating 2-D, 3-D, transport and MPEG-2 functions in one chip, ATI also developed a
unified memory graphics architecture under which all three separate memories (2-D, 3-D.
transport, MPEG-2) are effectively combined into a single memory.
Only 8 Mbytes
Eiref said that as few as 8 Mbytes of memory is required for simultaneous true-color (32
bit/pixel) graphics, transport demux and HDTV MPEG-2 decode. At a time when decoding a
1080i HDTV stream alone requires a 9- to 10-Mbyte memory in most other solutions, ATI sees
this as a good cost-saving measure for system vendors.
ATI uses its own MPEG-2 adaptive compression technique, which allows its silicon to compress
HDTV video as the chip's decoding engine decompresses the incoming stream. More
accurately, "in decoding, you don't decode it to a full resolution," explained Eiref. He added,
however, "HDTV decoding, under the use of MPEG-2 adaptive compression, may suffer a little
degradation, but it is not so noticeable."
Reference platform
ATI is also introducing a reference platform called Set-top-Wonder HDTV, offering the complete
back end to an HDTV or SDTV set-top box. The platform includes a MIPS CPU, graphics,
memory, flash, I/O and multiple PCI slots.
The platform is available with an integrated Texas Instruments DOCSIS-certified cable mode,
and it will be available soon with a second-generation VSB demodulator for terrestrial HDTV
broadcasting, the company promised.
The bill of materials for a complete high-definition TV satellite or terrestrial set-top box, including
software and analog modem for Web browsing, totals less than $200 when using the
Set-top-Wonder HDTV architecture, according to ATI.
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By: Junko Yoshida
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. |
