ANT FRESCO BROWSER PORTED TO STMICROELECTRONICS' OMEGA FAMILY REFERENCE DESIGN HARDWARE AND STAPI SOFTWARE.

ANT Limited, a provider of embedded communication appliance software for consumer electronics, Internet appliances and eCommerce products, has announced that its Fresco browser has been ported to STMicroelectronics' OMEGA STi551x family reference design hardware and Application Programming Interface (STAPI) software. This design for set top boxes joins ANT's existing library of demonstration platform designs developed in partnership with RTOS and processor vendors for quick and cost effective OEM product development. The port was completed in just four weeks.

"ANT Fresco is the browser of choice for our digital consumer applications," said Peter Hulme, marketing manager for start-ups and new IP at STMicroelectronics. "This port will allow ST to offer a fully functional browser solution to customers purchasing the STi551x family of evaluation platforms for use with the STAPI driver software layer, increasing their functionality and content. It will also give customers the option of licensing Fresco for deployment on all Internet devices using the ST technology."

ST's development platforms for digital consumer applications use the OMEGA family of digital decoders and include drivers based on STAPI, which also supports middleware such as OpenTV's EN2. ANT licensed STAPI to develop the port of Fresco and enable ST to provide a demonstration design that incorporates a world class browser. As a result of this port, Fresco will be made available as an object-code plug-in to all STAPI licensees, while Fresco source code may be licensed direct from ANT.

"This development, and the fact it was completed in just one month, is yet another example of ANT Fresco's high portability and flexibility," said John Cherry, Sr. VP of sales and marketing at ANT. "We're very pleased to be working with ST and to have the opportunity to showcase our browser on its real-time operating system and software. By partnering with ST, we are able to offer yet another browser solution to help OEMs get their product to market in a much shorter time."

ANT Fresco is a browser that enables freedom to leverage brand identity. It has a small memory footprint, and is a platform-independent and standards-compliant browser enabling OEMs to quickly and easily customize a branded interface for their Internet appliances. The browser is based on a patent pending three-layer architecture, consisting of the ANT Portability Environment (APE), which manages the interface to the hardware platform; the core standards-compliant browser code; and a graphical front end, which allows the design of a custom user interface and functionality. For this new reference design, APE is ported to STAPI which maps onto ST's real-time operating system, called ST-lite, and its ST5512 CPU, although it is portable to any of ST's 551x series without any modifications.