Broadcom Corp BCM2820: New design combines multimedia and applications processors

Combining the vendor’s VideoCore multimedia processor and the ARM11 applications processor, the BMC2820 applications processor has a 300-MHz ARM core. The device supports an 8M-pixel digital camera; MPEG-4/H.264 VGA video decoding at 30 frames/sec; video encoding at 30 frames/sec; an NTSC/PAL TV output through composite, component, and S-video connections; and Linux. The vendor based the design on the VideoCore video-processing engine and is compatible with all chips in the BCM27xx family. The provided Linux-based software includes wireless LAN and Bluetooth stacks, audio and video codecs, image-editing applications, 3-D graphics acceleration, PlaysForSure, and drivers supporting cellular-baseband modems. The BCM2820 costs $15 (10,000). The vendor also offers a development kit featuring the BCM2820, a Linux board-support package, and a suite of multimedia Codecs.

Broadcom Corp, www.broadcom.com