IBM Corp is set to demonstrate a PowerPC-based system on a chip designed for set-top boxes this week at the National Association Of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. It says the integration can lower the cost of manufacturing devices to enable interactive digital TV, telephone services and internet access through standard televisions. The new chip is part of IBM’s pervasive computing effort around which it formed a new division last year.
Around 30 cores are integrated onto the single chip, which is based around a PowerPC 401 engine with MPEG audio and video decode systems, on-board caches, an on-chip memory, and peripherals such as IEEE 1284, 12C and smart card interfaces. A unified memory architecture gives the option of support for SDRAM, DRAM, ROM and Flash memory.
IBM is offering a development kit consisting of boards and tools, with support for software including pSOS, OpenTV and Media Highway. The IBM39 digital set-top box controllers come in MPEG audio or Dolby Digital audio versions. They are sampling now, with production volumes expected by July. The price is $26 per 100,000 with further discounts for larger volumes.
