Consumer-tuned chips exemplify integration trend
By Brian Dipert -- EDN, January 20, 2005
As a given application increases in popularity, system shipments rise, competition emerges, and cost pressures consequently increase, Moore’s Law inexorably comes into play. Chip vendors at the core of the system design pull functions that formerly resided in separate peripherals into their next-generation products. These core semiconductor suppliers also expand the overall capabilities of their products and therefore the ability for their customers to differentiate themselves from their competition.
LSI Logic’s DiMeNsion-3 chip set exemplifies the many-into-one trend, responding to the emergence of less-than-$150 DVD recorders and the high likelihood of further price declines in the future, which today’s less-than-$50 DVD players forecast. The three-chip combination of the DMN-8603 system processor, the L3200 servo and analog-front-end device, and either the L2146 or the L2150 NTSC/PAL analog-video decoder delivers a DVD recorder bill-of-materials cost $40 less than its 2002 equivalent, according to Consumer Products Marketing Manager Jim Fox. Some of this cost savings comes from multichip-to-single-chip feature integration; the remainder comes from the conversion to a unified flash-plus-DRAM subsystem versus the multiple redundant volatile- and nonvolatile-memory arrays of past system architectures.
The DMN-8603 delivers comprehensive features: format flexibility to support DVD-RAM, DVD-RW/-R, and DVD+RW/+R, including dual-layer writing, optical discs; DiVX and MPEG-4 encoding and decoding support; Super Audio CD and DVD-audio decoding for universal player designs; standard-definition-to-high-definition upconversion and high-definition JPEG decoding; simultaneous 480-line interlaced and progressive-scan analog-video outputs; and YesDVD Version 2.0 support (see “DVD controllers deliver the write options,” EDN, Jan 22, 2004, pg 18). The entry-level L2150 includes 9-bit video ADCs and comes in a 32-pin TQFP; the more advanced L2146 upgrades the ADCs to 10-bit resolution, supports both RGB and component--video inputs, and comes in an 80-pin TQFP. The three-chip DVD-recorder set costs $25 (1 million); LSI Logic has no plans to separately sell each chip.
Analyze the generation-to-generation integration of TI’s imaging processors, and you get a fairly accurate forecast of future audio-processor trends (see “Imaging competitors choose divergent paths to a nebulous destination,” EDN, March 18, 2004, pg 20). TI supplements the 192-MHz c55x DSP core of the previous-generation TMS320DADA250 and smaller process DA255 with an 84-MHz ARM7TDMI CPU core to construct the $11.95 (Picture) (100,000) TMS320DADA295 (see “Processor vendors hope to get an ‘arm up’ on the competition,” EDN, Nov 23, 2000, pg 28). The ARM core offloads the DSP from some of the system-control functions that the DSP previously had to handle, enabling the c55x to focus its attention on the multimedia tasks it best manages.
The ARM7TDMI also acts as a multimedia coprocessor as necessary. With iPod photos in mind, TI is touting the DA295’s ability to decode JPEG images at 1 million-pixel/sec rates. (Note that this performance estimate does not include postprocessing.) The company also touts the DA295’s ability to handle MPEG-4 simple profile streams at QCIF frame sizes but unspecified frame rates. The company plans for the DA295 to be available in sample quantities by the end of the first quarter of 2005, with production slated for the third quarter. A $20,000 production-ready reference design, including all necessary software, will also be available in the second quarter.
LSI Logic, www.lsilogic.com.
Texas Instruments, 1-972-995-2011, www.ti.com.
