Mediabolic and Broadcom will ship in October a Linux-based hardware/software reference design for an embedded home media NAS (network-attached storage) server. The design uses Broadcom's MIPS32-based “NASoC” (network-attached storage-on-chip), along with Mediabolic's Media Server software stack for… streaming music, photos, and video.

(Click for larger view of Broadcom's home media NAS server design)

Broadcom's media server hardware reference design is based on its BCM4780 SoC (system-on-chip) IC, which combines a 300MHz MIPS32 core with multiple storage interfaces, including a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus and USB 1.1 host/device interfaces. The chip has a memory controller supporting 8MB to 512MB of 133MHz SDR/DDR SDRAM, an Ethernet MAC with MII, dual UARTs, GPIO, and a cryptographic engine supporting AES-CBC, 3DES-CBC, MD5, SSL, and other popular algorithms.

BCM4780P system diagram
(Click to enlarge)
Mediabolic's Media Server software stack targets PCs, NAS devices, DVRs (digital video recorders), and other consumer electronics devices running Linux or Windows OSes. It includes hardware- and OS-abstraction layers, a range of middleware, a user-space API suppobting C/C++ and ActiveX, and a media server application.

Mediabolic's Media Server stack architecture
Mediabolic says its Media Server stack was designed according to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) guidelines, and complies with the UPnP AV 1.0 specification. The stack has also been certified compliant with Intel's NMPR (networked media product requirements), the company says.

Mediabolic CEO Daniel Putterman said, “It was a clear choice for Mediabolic to leverage the most popular, most competitive chip available today to create a turnkey NAS media server.”

Broadcom's director of NASoC business development, David Murray, said, “We have a large number of customers either shipping or developing NAS products on our silicon, and each one of them can easily add Mediabolic's media server functionality without having to make additional changes to the hardware.”

Availability

The combined hardware/software media server reference design will be available from Broadcom in October of 2005. Mediabolic's Media Server stack can be licensed in binary or source formats.

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