Startups show new direction for media chips
Anthony Cataldo
01/12/98
Electronic Engineering Times
Page 01
Copyright 1998 CMP Publications Inc.
Campbell, Calif. - The quest for low-cost silicon to drive next-generation digital televisions and sub-$1,000 PCs promises to inject new life into the market for multimedia processors. Jumping at the chance, a well-heeled startup, Equator Technologies Inc., plans to unleash by June a multimedia processor that will have the backing of a small army of software engineers, EE Times has learned.
Meanwhile, an early player in media processors, Chromatic Research Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), is doggedly moving forward with plans to unveil software for its Mpact 2, even as it shuffles its executive suite amid worries over sales revenue.
For several years, the media processor-typically a DSP-like device that promises to handle multiple streams of data through software running on a coprocessor and host CPU-has been seen as the great hope for solving the convergence of digital media types. But most players have stumbled trying to deliver on this vision. Samsung Electronics, for example, cancelled its Media Signal Processor project last year amid market uncertainty, while companies like Chromatic Research and Philips TriMedia Group have thus far demonstrated limited cceptance.
That could change. In consumer electronics, the prospect of decoding HDTV formats may be too daunting for many fixed-function devices. Media processors, on the other hand, could get a second chance to prove their mettle by handling multiple media streams in software as opposed to stitching together multiple functional hardware blocks on a chip.
Founded in 1990 by the original members of Multiflow, considered by many to be one of the pioneers in Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processing, Equator has been quietly fashioning a programmable multimedia device that would handle video, audio, imaging and communications. Few outsiders know about the company's plans, yet Equator has more than 200 employees in four U.S. locations and Tokyo, and is being backed by "big-time Far East money and fab partners," said Ted Niday, vice president of marketing for Equator here. Refusing details, Niday said only that the company will make its first product announcement by the second quarter. "A lot of people have made a lot of claims about their media processors but haven't delivered," he said. "We want to show people stuff that works."
HDTV decoding
Past company presentations, however, suggest that Equator is likely pursuing a strategy that pays special attention to decoding HDTV formats. The company said a media processor could reduce the processing load and memory requirements needed to decode the 18 different formats prescribed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee. For example, the company said, a media processor could decode HDTV signals by "preparsing," or trimming unnecessary coefficients in the bit stream, down-sampling and image filtering, to convert a 1,920 x 1,080 image to 960 x 540 resolution or a 1,280 x 720 to 640 x 360.
By paring image size, memory requirements could shrink from as much as 96 Mbytes to 16. Processing would be in the range of 5 billion to 10 billion operations per second, which would require only a 50 percent performance boost over a conventional SDTV decoder, the company said.
"What this allows you to do is receive the signal for high resolution HDTV, simplify it and display it on a less-expensive monitor," said Peter Glaskowsky, an analyst with MicroDesign Resources (Sunnyvale, Calif.). "If they have the power to do this correctly, they may have an advantage over Chromatic or some other media-processor company."
Indeed, the idea of using media processors to process DTV grunt work appears to be making headway. Last week, Samsung and the Trimedia Product Group of Philips Semiconductor announced they would develop a DTV downconverter algorithm for Philips' TriMedia processor, which would convert the 18 video-transmission formats to standard-definition TV signals with 480i or 480p resolutions (see Jan. 5, page 8). At CES last week, Philips launched a projection TV driven by its TriMedia 1 chip together with a newly developed ASIC.
For its part, Chromatic Research (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is reportedly working with another start up, Epigram, which is developing digital-TV decode algorithms to run on Chromatic's Mpact and other processors (see Nov. 10, 1997, page 22).
Meanwhile, Chromatic Research has reorganized its executives as it readies software modules for its Mpact 2 chip and investigates making an initial public offering. Former president Wes Patterson is now chief executive officer, while chief operating officer David Holt will also serve as president. Holt takes over day-to-day operations while Patterson will focus on relations with investors and exploring opportunities to bring the company public.
Slow sales
The move was partly in response to Chromatic's need to address its financial state, sources said. With about 300 employees, the company has a high "burn rate" but has yet to see significant sales of its Mediaware software. The company is struggling to sell OEMs on the idea of using the Mpact chip-manufactured by Toshiba, LG Semicon and, soon, SGS-Thomson-and its Mediaware software for a variety of multimedia applications.
The company gets revenues through sales of Mediaware software, while chip-sale revenues go to its manufacturing partners. The first-generation Mpact chip has been designed into DVD units from Compaq, Gateway 2000 and Micron Electronics; but, so far, those systems have shipped in limited volumes.
Changing strategy somewhat in 1997, the company decided to release software in modules for Mpact 2 rather than in one full-fledged package, a herculean task it took on with Mpact 1. The first module is expected to be released later this month and will target 3-D and DVD applications. But sources said that Chromatic was likely to derive less revenue from these software modules than from release of the full software package and that it must step up its efforts to release the follow-on modules in the first half.
Despite those concerns, Chromatic said, the company is financially healthy and recently brought in new investors. It also expects fresh design wins from makers of sub-$1,000 PCs.
"One of the major trends now is this low-cost PC explosion," Holt said. "The fact is we integrate all of these functions in one chip, and we can compete effectively in graphics and video and add audio and communications for little incremental cost." |
