PowerTV Announces New Multimedia ASIC for Digital Set-top Terminals; Eagle chip reduces part count for set-top terminal designers; includes features specifically designed for television multimedia applications.CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 26, 1995--PowerTV, Inc. today announced the development of a new multimedia ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. for integrating high-quality multimedia capabilities into cable or broadband digital set-top terminals. The company's Eagle(TM) semiconductor is designed to replace several support chips currently required in set-top terminals, enabling a significant cost-saving to designers. Scientific-Atlanta (PowerTV's parent company) is the first OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and to license the Eagle ASIC for its new digital home communication terminals (DHCTs) and has also licensed the PowerTV OS. The Eagle ASIC addresses the unique issues associated with integrating digital video and audio into a television environment, and includes a number of high-performance features for graphics acceleration, audio mixing, scaling and compositing. Primary features of Eagle include: -- Graphics display and manipulation -- Compositing of graphics with video -- Scaling of digitized motion video (MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). , analog) -- High performance graphics compositing, supports sprite animation -- Alpha blending and anti-aliasing of graphics and video -- Playback of CPU-generated PCM (1) See phase change memory. (2) (Plug Compatible Manufacturer) An organization that makes a computer or electronic device that is compatible with an existing machine. audio (sound bytes, synthesis, etc.) -- Mixing of PCM audio with digitized audio (e.g. MPEG, Dolby, analog) -- Glue-less interfaces to all components, including memory, CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. , and audio and video sources and outputs -- Support for both square pixels and CCIR See ITU. 601 pixel sampling -- Uses standard or EDO DRAM; 512kB, 1MB, or 2MB -- CPU bus has IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) PPC See Pocket PC, PowerPC and pay-per-click. PPC - PowerPC 403 and Motorola MPC (1) (Mobile PC) A handheld or laptop computer. See handheld computer, laptop computer and Ultra-Mobile PC. (2) (MultiPath Channel) See multipath. 505 configurations -- 208 pin plastic package -- 0.6 micron CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Pronounced "c-moss." The most widely used integrated circuit design. It is found in almost every electronic product from handheld devices to mainframes. standard cell 5V technology The Eagle chip was created to assist set-top terminal OEMs in designing a product that was optimized for use with the new PowerTV(TM) interactive television (ITV (1) See interactive TV. (2) (iTV) The code name for Apple's video media hub (see Apple TV). ) operating system. The Eagle ASIC is licensed to OEMs by PowerTV in tandem with the PowerTV OS to enable a complete, high-performance ITV solution. Quotes "1996 represents the first real market opportunity for digital set-top terminals and interactive television," said Greg Sheppard, Director/Principal Analyst, Semiconductor Application Markets for Dataquest -- one of the leading semiconductor market research firms. "The PowerTV Eagle ASIC offers a wide range of multimedia features and addresses cost-reduction issues specifically targeted at the set-top manufacturer. These are two key areas that will be necessary to make digital set-top terminals a market success in the latter half of the decade. The integration of the Eagle ASIC with the PowerTV operating system is the right approach to jump-start a new industry." "The Eagle chip represents PowerTV's efforts to create an ASIC that offers high-performance and unique features for advanced set-top designs," said Sandy MacInnis, vice president of hardware development at PowerTV. "We believe that set-top OEMs are looking for the Eagle chip's unique combination of TV-oriented multimedia acceleration, a glue-less component interface to reduce system costs and the integration we offer with the PowerTV OS. PowerTV is actively supporting our key OEM customers to enable them to deliver a 'one-two' combination of quickly entering the ITV market with a high-performance set-top and a robust, well-architected OS." Applications and Benefits of the Eagle ASIC The Eagle ASIC is designed specifically for use with televisions and television-type monitors and supports both 525/60 (NTSC-type) and 625/50 (PAL and SECAM-type) video standards. It is capable of providing display images and audio whose quality is limited only by the display and sound system. The chip accelerates a number of functions that might otherwise be performed in software, in addition to providing capabilities that are not possible in software, including: -- Multiple display modes to suit various applications and system configuration -- A high speed "blitter" (pixel array transfer) with powerful compositing acceleration capabilities -- Internal queues and caches to accelerate all functions -- Four types of alpha blending for graphics compositing and overlay -- Anti-flutter filter -- Soft-edged medium-resolution overlay mixing -- Scaling of motion video to arbitrary sizes The Eagle ASIC provides audio mixing and output with CD quality, i.e. stereo 16-bit PCM at 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz. Sounds produced by the CPU or other device are played from local memory, synchronized with MPEG or other program material, and mixed with audio from an MPEG or Dolby(R) audio decoder or analog audio digitizer. Graphics Display Capabilities The Eagle chip's graphics capabilities are optimized for use in television environments, which differ significantly from personal computer displays. As a whole, television has lower resolution, a larger display area, more color blurring, and more flicker (50 or 60 Hz) and interlace To illuminate a screen by displaying all odd lines in the frame first and then all even lines. Interlacing uses half frames per second (fields per second) rather than full frames per second. flutter than computer displays. High-quality text is also difficult to display on televisions, and represents an important component of many applications. The ASICs graphics display operates in a choice of two resolution modes and two color space modes to address these requirements. These are chosen by the application according to varying requirements for memory configuration, memory utilization, application compatibility and performance as well as image quality. The resolution modes are further subdivided into 525/60 (NTSC (National TV Standards Committee) The committee that developed the television standards for the U.S, which are also used in Canada, Japan, South Korea and several Central and South American countries. Both the committee and the standard are called "NTSC. ) and 625/50 (PAL/SECAM) display modes, and either square pixel aspect ratio or CCIR-601 pixel aspect ratio The term pixel aspect ratio, sometimes shortened to aspect ratio, is also used in the context of computer graphics to describe the distribution of pixel in a digitized image. . Square pixels are generally preferred by application developers. Overlay compositing The graphics display from the Eagle chip can be optionally composited with full-motion video from sources such as an MPEG-II video decoder or an analog video digitizer and decoder (DMSD DMSD Digital Multi Standard Decoding DMSD Depot Maintenance Study Directorate DMSD Display Map Sensor Data ). Compositing includes overlay with alpha-blending and this function is integrated with interpolation interpolation In mathematics, estimation of a value between two known data points. A simple example is calculating the mean (see mean, median, and mode) of two population counts made 10 years apart to estimate the population in the fifth year. , anti-flutter filtering, and edge smoothing for best-quality image display. Audio Capabilities Functions Internal PCM audio is played from local DRAM and mixed with external audio streams such as those from an MPEG or Dolby audio decoder or analog audio digitizer. The resulting audio mix is a distinct output signal which then drives a DAC See D/A converter and discretionary access control. DAC - Digital to Analog Converter (Digital Analog Converter). Sound formats other than 16-bit stereo, i.e. 16-bit mono and 8-bit mono and stereo are converted internally to 16-bit stereo before mixing with external audio. The Eagle ASIC includes support for MPEG Systems time stamps for exact synchronization with MPEG-format or other program material. Display Acceleration Capabilities In addition to the basic display and audio functions, the Eagle chip includes powerful acceleration functions which can be used to produce complex animated scenes. These include a very powerful blitter, sprite scene control, dithering Simulating more colors and shades in a palette. In a monochrome system that displays or prints only black and white, shades of grays can be simulated by creating varying patterns of black dots. This is how halftones are created in a monochrome printer. , and four types of alpha blending, all of which execute simultaneously with little CPU intervention. To illustrate, an application may choose to create a display with a large number of layers and objects, each of which may be translucent or opaque, and each of which may be an animated sprite. Any part of the image, or the background, may be live video from an MPEG or analog source. The application has the ability to move any or all of the scene elements in any layer at any time, with no on-screen tearing artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. and very minimal load on the CPU. As another example, a scene may include full screen MPEG-II or analog video with one or more translucent regions, each containing very high quality anti-aliased text. Video Scaling and Memory Live MPEG-2 or analog video can be scaled to any size on the screen. Various amounts and types of memory are supported for different applications. Memory quantities range from 512kB to 2MB, and both standard page mode and EDO Edo: see Tokyo, Japan. hyper page mode DRAM Page Mode DRAM - Page Mode Dynamic Random Access Memory are supported. The choice of DRAM size and type may be optimized for the applications requirements. Eagle ASIC Availability and Pricing The Eagle ASIC will be sampling to select OEMs in the fourth quarter of 1995 and in small quantities, (10,000 units or less) pricing will start at under $30. The Eagle ASIC will normally be licensed in tandem with the PowerTV OS. For further information, call 408-777-7579 or e-mail eagle@powertv.com. Company Information PowerTV, Inc. (Cupertino, CA) is a company devoted to providing operating systems, tools and semiconductor solutions for the ITV market. The PowerTV operating system and the Eagle multimedia ASIC have been selected by Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. for use in its new digital home communication terminals. PowerTV is a subsidiary of Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. -0- NOTE TO EDITORS: PowerTV and Eagle are trademarks of PowerTV, Inc. All other trademarks and tradenames belong to their respective owners. Photography of the PowerTV logo and the Eagle ASIC are available from Horizon PR. CONTACT: PowerTV Joe Taglia, 408/777-7579 (Sales) e-mail:eagle@powertv.com Web Site: http://www.powertv.com or Horizon Public Relations Jonathan Hirshon, 408/982-2555 (Media) e-mail: jh@horizonpr.com Web Site: http://www.horizonpr.com |
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