Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) is shipping a reference design for Linux-based DVD players, IP-STBs, and digital media players. The design includes a MIPS-based TAEC SoC along with a Sigma Designs decoder chip, and can decode MPEG-2/4 or WMV9 video at standard or high definitions, the company says.

(Click for larger image of mini-ITX version of Toshiba/Sigma reference design)

The new reference design is based on TAEC's TX4938 processor, a 64-bit SoC (system-on-chip) with a TX49/H3 core clocked at 300 or 333MHz. Also included on the SoC are a PCI bus interface; DMA, interrupt, and timing controllers; I/O controllers for Ethernet, AC-link (AC97) audio, SPI serial, and UART; and 16 programmable digital I/O lines.

Toshiba's TX4938 SoC block diagram
The reference design also includes a digital media processor from Sigma Designs's EM8620L family. The EM8620L chips feature an ARM/RISC-based application processor “for single chipset devices,” Sigma says, in addition to decoding engines for MPEG-4.10 (H.264), VC-1, WMV9, MPEG-4.2, and MPEG-2. Sigma says the EM8620L delivers “the highest quality image possible on high definition displays.”

The EM8620L chip in the TAEC reference design is supplied on Sigma's “Odyssey” development kit platform, which includes a PCI card (optionally available with a passive PCI backplane), Linux drivers, and development tools.

The TX4938 SoC in the design can be supplied by either TAEC's RBTX4938 ATX reference board or its AVM49R mini-ITX multimedia reference platform. Both run MontaVista Linux.

TAEC's VP of embedded processors, Shardul Kazi, said, “Over the past few years, TAEC has been working closely with Sigma Designs on the development of a series of multimedia reference platforms, and this new platform represents another milestone.”

Availability

The Toshiba AVM49R Multimedia Reference Platform Hardware Developer Kit is available now, priced at $10,000 per license. The RBTX4938 reference board is also shipping, priced at $2,000.

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