Brian's Brain

A month back, when I wrote about the unveiling of the preview edition of v1.4 of the HDMI specification, I said:

Stay tuned for additional details...

I wasn't referring to v1.4 spec finalization, which occurred on June 8, thankfully well ahead of HDMI's self-imposed end-of-June deadline. What I was referring to is the release of Silicon Image's first two v1.4-supportive chips (the SiI9387 Port Processor and SiI9334 Transmitter), which happened last Monday. This wasn't, you see, the way things were originally supposed to play out, back when I was initially briefed under nondisclosure in mid-April.

My telecon at that time consisted of two back-to-back half-hour sessions, one with Steve Venuti (HDMI Licensing, LLC President) and the other with director of product marketing Waheed Rasheed. The original plan was for both the finalized specification and the chips based on it to be publicly unveiled at 5AM PT on April 28:

Then, as my earlier writeup noted, the embargo date for both spec and silicon got pushed out to mid-May (here are the cover pages of the revised presentations sent to me in late April):

and eventually, the spec was released standalone as a two-step preview-then-final introduction, with the chips following it last week.

You'll note, however, that in spite of the multiple delays, nobody else to the best of my knowledge has yet released HDMI v1.4-supportive chips. The dearth of competitors' devices, combined with the tight-knit spec-and-silicon briefing coupling from Silicon Image, is the impetus for this particular post. Check out these two consecutive foils from the briefing package I received:

Some of you may not already realize this, but Silicon Image is an 'umbrella' company encompassing three key business groups:

• HDMI Licensing, LLC
• Silicon Image, Inc. which does chip designs, and
• Simplay Labs, LLC, which handles industry-wide compatibility testing

Also, Silicon Image is a HDMI Founder company, along with:

• Hitachi
• Matsushita/Panasonic
• Philips Consumer Electronics International
• Sony
• Thomson (RCA), and
• Toshiba

Note that while some of the other companies in the above list have semiconductor divisions (which, among other things, feed chips to their systems corporate siblings), only Silicon Image is fundamentally a semiconductor supplier. And, as a Founder, it is in the unique position (versus other HDMI silicon vendors) of not only having access to proprietary draft versions of upcoming spec revisions, but also being able to heavily influence the development direction of those spec revisions.

Silicon Image can start its chip design work early, and it has notable leverage in ensuring that its classified draft specification-based design work isn't for naught. The company garners substantial revenue from other silicon suppliers (i.e. its supposed competitors) in the form of licensing revenues. And it's got yet another notable competition-squelching arrow in its quiver. Each Simplay Labs validation attempt costs other companies many thousands of dollars. The validation process takes as long as Simplay Labs deems it should take. Any Simplay-determined deviation from the spec, no matter how miniscule, requires a silicon turn and a subsequent re-submittal. And, given that many retailers won't accept end products absent the Simplay Labs seal of approval (Best Buy, until recently, was one notable example), this arrangement gives Silicon Image a convenient lock on the market through the initial and particularly profitable portion of each HDMI specification version's lifetime.

Not surprisingly, I've heard plenty of complaining over the years from companies who try to compete with Silicon Image on the supposedly 'global standard' playing field. But interestingly, I've also been on the receiving end of a lot of grumbling from Silicon Image's customers...some of them even on the HDMI Founders list! Systems suppliers would prefer to be able to source product from multiple vendors, both as a means of obtaining optimum pricing and assured supply. However, again and again they find that Silicon Image is their only product option in the early stages of a particular HDMI specification version. And, by the time a particular HDMI generation is sufficiently mature that other vendors are available, it's time for Silicon Image's reluctant customers to begin designing systems to the upcoming next HDMI version.

Of course, nobody's willing to speak 'on the record', because they don't want to endanger their continued flow of HDMI chip supply. The market situation's so distorted that a collective of graphics chip companies and display manufacturers banded together a few years back to develop a competitive interface approach called DisplayPort. I've suggested many times in the past that DisplayPort's success will be muted at best, in no small part because it took the technology's developers so long to finalize the specification that HDMI was able to cultivate an insurmountable lead, especially in the living room. And looking at the market today, I see no evidence that my past prognostication was off-base. However, that HDMI's detractors were motivated to spend the substantial money and allocate the precious resources for DisplayPort development is indicative of the industry aggravation with Silicon Image's de facto HDMI dictatorship.

To be abundantly clear, I've got no particular issue with Silicon Image's dominance of the digital display interface segment. The word monopoly, after all, doesn't have a direct correlation to any particular market segment share position; it instead refers to the means by which a company acquires, preserves and further expands that market segment share. The core of my issue with Silicon Image centers on the fact that the company's trying to have it both ways; painting a picture of HDMI as a cozy, cooperative industry standard, when in reality HDMI's predominantly a single-silicon-supplier proprietary approach.