San Jose, CA; Microprocessor Forum — (press release excerpt) — Graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies Inc. today unveiled what is claimed to be “the fastest and most highly integrated system-on-chip (SOC) for the digital set-top box and digital TV markets.” The new chip integrates into a single chip all processor, graphics, video, audio, and I/O capabilities needed in a set-top box or digital TV. Specifically, the ATI XILLEON 220 includes a 300MHz MIPS RISC architecture CPU (including MMU) along with MPEG decoder, audio decoder, display engine, 2D/3D graphics engine, conditional access, transport demultiplexers, PCI bus, USB, and hard disk interfaces. Only tuners, modems, and memory need to be added externally to complete the design for many consumer devices.

A reference platform is available to assist customers in the development and debug of new designs. The reference design and is a complete set-top or digital TV solution on one board. Completing the design of many products simply requires plugging in a network interface module (NIM) for the appropriate broadcast format — QAM, QPSK, COFDM, or VSB — into a NIM connector and plugging other peripherals into the board's PCI slots. The board supports Linux and several other embedded operating systems. Driver-level software and reference applications are available.

XILLEON 220 chip volume production is targeted to begin in Q1 2002.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.