Media Processors worry me more......................
(could just be a question of who has the algorithm)
techweb.com
What remains to be seen is how willingly system OEMs will embrace such tools and plunge into code development for a specific media processor on their own. "We do provide customization services when OEMs request it, but many OEMs have now begun to use tools to differentiate their products," said VM Labs' Miller. Nevertheless, VM Labs offers a complete DVD reference design, schematics and core firmware for all the basic features necessary in a DVD player, including navigation, user interface and trick play modes.
When it comes to the other side of software-videogame designers and other title developers-VM Labs believes the matter is more straightforward. While promoting C-compiler availability for easy application development, the company is hopeful that its unique instruction-set architecture will entice top game designers to experiment with non-polygon-based alternative 3-D graphics engines.
"Our hybrid approach first allows prototyping titles in C, then it gives programmers an opportunity to optimize critical parts of them in assembly language, thus improving the overall performance," said Miller.
Besides DVD players and set-top boxes, most media-processor vendors are keeping a weather eye on digital TV as a potential prime market for their devices-perhaps the fabled killer app. Philips' TriMedia and Equator are leading the drumroll for DTV media processing.
Unlike NTSC TVs and VHS VCRs-which enjoy an industry-approved, unified format and low-cost microcontrollers and hardwired ASICs-a digital TV set today must receive programs and Internet home pages created in multiple formats. The U.S. DTV standard has as many as 18 video formats, while six are being discussed in Japan. TV manufacturers, in principle, plan to make their products ready for all formats, at least in their high-end lines. "To cope with various digital formats, we've needed a form of media processor," said Nishizawa at Matsushita.
A flexible and inexpensive chip capable of changing product functionality easily is essential in product development in the multiple-platform era. One general-purpose CPU, such as the Pentium, designed to do everything in software may not have sufficient performance.
"Probably around 2003, the performance of a general-purpose processor will catch up to the level required to process complete motion video decoding in standard-definition TV resolution without frame drops," said Nishizawa. "But such general-purpose processors that are fast and high-performance consume too much power. We cannot make DVD players, TV sets or other home-electronics products equipped with cooling fans like personal computers use."
Matsushita sees its first MCP1, designed into the company's portable DVD players, as "a sort of a prototype," he said. Beyond that, the company is preparing to launch full-blown development tools for its processor and putting the finishing touches on MCP1+, the second-generation device.
Expected by the end of this year, it uses a 0.25-micron CMOS process, said Eijiro Toyoda, general manager of the CD system LSI development center at Matsushita. Matsushita engineers are keeping power dissipation at the same level as the MCP1, while the shrink version will have a faster clock frequency at 81 MHz. Performance will be 5 billion operations per second, a rate that allows the chip to add such functions as 480 progressive-signal decoding, Digital Theater System (DTS) effect processing and DVD audio decoding. These will augment the functions already integrated into MCP1, such as MPEG video Main Profile @ Main Level and Dolby Digital audio decoding.
By 2000, the third-generation MCP2 will likely be fabricated on a 0.18-micron process and boast 8.3-Bops performance at 135 MHz. At this level, it will handle all video format processing necessary for HDTV: MPEG video, high-definition to standard-definition downconversion, DTS and Dolby Digital, AAC and DVD audio. Matsushita is targeting the MCP2 at HDTV satellite broadcasting, scheduled for 2000 in Japan.
Meanwhile, Mitsubishi is tailoring its first media processor-based ASSP, the D30V, scheduled to hit the market next year, as an MPEG-2 encoder LSI. The goal is to use the device as the core of various multimedia systems. "We are then going to offer development environments compliant with ASIC tools, so that ASIC users can design the chip by themselves," said a Mitsubishi engineer.
The first MPEG-2 encoding LSI will have two 250-MHz dual-issue RISC processor cores and dedicated hardware for motion estimation and variable-length coding. Fabricated on a 0.3-micron CMOS process, the encoder chip is 27.7 mm2, or 20 percent smaller than a dedicated hardware approach, Mitsubishi claims.
For its part, Sharp is developing roughly four categories of applications for its DDMP: video signal processing, MPEG-2 encoding and decoding, graphics processing and protocol control for communications. One interesting application is the use of DDMP in color-fax machines. Today, the much-higher cost of a color printer and the much-slower speed of color processing have hindered color-fax machines.
Furthermore, the process for such a development gets complicated as specifications vary to accommodate different geographical markets. When Sharp decided to introduce a color-fax machine this fall in Japan, the United States and Europe, a critical decision was whether to spin three different hardwired ASICs or use a media processor that would make it possible to do minor changes in software for each of the geographical markets.
The choice was a media processor. "Because we could integrate an assortment of electrical interfaces and certain peripheral functions in our media processor, we think we could offer system OEMs a realistic solution that is much more integrated and cost effective in a shorter time-to-market, compared to the development of ASICs," said Miyata.
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