Junko Yoshida

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EE Times

(09/08/2005 2:19 PM EDT)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Texas Instruments, which leveraged its DSP technology to become the dominant player in voice and mobile telephony, is aiming to do the same in the digital video market with the launch of a new DSP-enabled video platform called DaVinci.

According to Richard Templeton, TI’s president and CEO, ``Just like voice was important in the last 25 years, in ten year’s time we will look back at video as being the next most important stage.``

DaVinci will be based on the TMS320C6000, TI’s newest C64x+ DSP core. The DaVinci processors consist of DSP-based system-on-chip, integrating DSP and ARM cores, accelerators, peripherals and necessary software, the Dallas-based company said.

Significantly, DaVinci will not rely solely on the programmable DSP core. Instead, it will incorporate hardware acceleration of computing-intensive functions when performance or power requirements dictate it and the stability of the underlying algorithms permitting. This will permit DaVinci, in TI`s view, to cover the enormous range of performance and power combinations in a market that stretches from ultra-compact digital cameras and video handsets to broadcast encoders and scientific image processing systems.

Billing DaVinci as the next-generation digital video engine, Gene Frantz, TI’s principal fellow, pitched DaVinci as a veritable Renaissance for myriad digital consumer products, from IP set-tops, digital TV, video telephony and security to digital still camera and portable video. “Every new business opportunity has something to do with video imaging,” he said.

MIPS in the mix

TI disclosed here Thursday (Sept. 8) that DaVinci could use processor blocks other than ARM. When asked if MIPS is included in the mix, TI`s Frantz said, ``Yes, it is, if that`s what the customer wants. They are both IPs in our bank.``

ARM, however, appears to be a preferred processor for DaVinci. Frantz said, ``We are going to start where our customer base is, and that [ARM] tends to be what they are asking for.``

It remains unclear how TI will maintain the integrity of the DaVinci software development environment if, for instance, one DaVinci SoC uses ARM and another uses MIPS. Frantz, however, said, “f we do our job right, the engine under the hood won`t change the car that much.``

On the question of availability, Frantz said processors, software and development tools will sample by the end of this year. ``And we have a host of people already developing DaVinci-based products.``

Indeed, TI is marshalling all it resources to promote DaVinci, including its established position in the DSP arena, its experience in advanced SoC development and its vast array of industry relationships. Despite its intention to address a broad swath of the digital video market with the new platform, its success is hardly a forgone conclusion.

Variables include the specific market segments TI plans to enter, how big and fast the market will grow and whether TI can attract third-party software vendors with enough breadth to cover each digital video system. Most important, TI needs a powerful customer — Nokia was an early backer of TI’s OMAP platform for cellphones — to help make DaVinci indispensable in the digital video market.

Platform approach, again

TI is not the first chip maker staking its future on a “platform-based” approach to digital video. Philips Semiconductors is promoting its Nexperia platform based on its TriMedia DSP and MIPS core. Similarly, STMicroelectronics is pursuing a reusable architecture. Its current STB7100 family of chips for digital video products includes the ST40, STs’ 32-bit RISC family based on the SuperH architecture, a VLIW core, hardware accelerators and a litany of software.

Nor is this TI’s first crack at the digital video market. “TI entered the set-top box market twice before and then, both times, withdrew when the business was not as good as they thought,” said Chris Carter, managing director at the Digital TV Consultancy (Windsor, England). “Customers are going to want to have confidence that TI is going to be successful before they make a commitment.”

Many in the industry believe TI is destined to face a range of new challenges in its efforts to crack the digital video market.

The biggest difference between the digital video and mobile phone markets is that video is much more fragmented, said Bob Krysiak, marketing director of ST’s Home, Personal, Communications Division. Digital video platforms demand “a different implementation for each operator, each geographical market and each service and application.” He added, “It requires a huge amount of work” to customize both hardware and software.

Can TI wedge DaVinci into volume products?

Decoding different video algorithms is, in fact, “last year’s problem,” said Krysiak. The challenge for chip vendors is developing a built-in architecture capable of dealing with numerous, different security features. “If you haven’t done that yet, you are in trouble.”

Indeed, many industry experts don’t believe TI can wedge DaVinci into mass-market products with huge installed bases such as cable and satellite set-top boxes and DVD players.

Enter the pay satellite and cable TV markets with DaVinci wouldn’t be a smart move for TI either, Carter said, adding “ST, Broadcom and Conexant have these pretty well locked up.” Barriers to entry are high, he explained, because of security requirements, which are often dictated by service operators, and the large investment in software for existing platforms.

DVD — or even future high-definition formats such as Blu-ray — may not be fertile ground for DaVinci either. “Those things are so cheap now that there isn`t much room for a DSP-based platform,” said Jan Koene, director of marketing responsible for media processing at Philips Semiconductors.

Jim Fox, director of DVD product marketing in LSI Logic’s Consumer Products Group, agreed. When the market is as big as it is for DVD systems, “a rifle-shot approach usually wins compared to a shotgun solution based on a general platform,” he said.

Armed with more experience in digital video, Philips Semiconductors sees a clear demarcation between certain video applications — where hard-wired solutions work better — and others where a DSP platform shines.

DaVinci will support several video codecs ranging from encode and decode of JPEG, MPEG-2 and -4 to H.264 and Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9. But Koene believes these multiformat video codecs aren’t necessarily the primary motivation for consumer OEMs to switch to a DSP-based platform. All the codecs, he added, “will soon get stabilized and become hardware.”

More powerful programmable processors will be needed “when you are adding video quality differentiations to your system,” Koene said. Functions like video post-processing or pre-processing remain ``a moving target,`` where constant innovation is happening in algorithm development, he added.

If it can’t gain traction in the DVD or pay TV set tops markets, TI’s best option may still be the shaky digital video market. While TI already has Kodak as its lead customer for digital still cameras, the industry has yet to identify a single big player in the still unproven IPTV set top market.

Nonetheless, TI has made inroads in the IPTV market, as have Analog Devices and Equator, said Michelle Abraham, senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR.She predicted that today’s relatively small IPTV set top market will double in subscribers over the next few years, reaching 31 million by 2009.

Once an IPTV set top is connected to the Internet, “openness and flexibility are key,” said Carter. That’s because the box must deal with a variety of video codecs and a multitude of video formats including MP3s, DivX, Real and Quicktime. It must also handle a variety of digital rights management protocols.

While most current set-top box chip sets use hard-wired MPEG-2, there are exceptions. STMicroelectronics and Broadcom already have H.264 decoders with HD resolution. “While these devices are targeted at the pay TV market, they could be reused elsewhere,” Carter said.

TI’s best bet, however, is leveraging consumer OEMs’ desire to call the shots on their system designs. With proprietary video cores from companies like ST, Broadcom and Conexant, “a customer has to rely on the silicon vendor to modify the video software for a new application,” said Carter.

TI’s Templeton added, “DaVinci is a standalone platform that will allow our customers to pick and choose the most efficient solutions in video.``

At a time when a range of digital video combo products are emerging, system OEMs’ product planning is at the mercy of cautious chip vendors. As LSI Logic’s Fox acknowledged, “We have to make a judgment on the likely winner” before committing any engineering resources.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of adoption of a DSP-based platform would be chip makers able to calibrate the time and money necessary to make IC variants optimized for a particular application.

Philips’ Koene noted that with all the investment needed for process development and IP acquisition, “semiconductor companies can no longer make money unless we can come up with a ‘platform’ — covering an entire system solution, including chips, drivers, software and applications — that can be pitched to a large market, possibly used by 20 different customers.”