Broadcom set-top chip supports personal video recording

By
EE Times
(05/09/02, 03:30:03 PM EDT)

Broadcom Corp. unveiled a device it called "the next-generation cable TV set-top solution" at the National Cable Television Association Cable 2002 show in New Orleans this week, complete with personal video recording (PVR) functionality, MPEG-2 decoding and a high-performance MIPS processor.

Richard Nelson, senior director for broadband communications at Broadcom, said the BCM7115 was "designed for a mainstream, high-volume market."

As cable companies play catch-up with satellite rivals that are equipping receivers with hard drives for PVR, they will need silicon to deliver the same capabilities in their set-tops. It remains unclear how much U.S. cable operators will be willing to spend to rearchitect the boxes and how soon they want to add PVR.

Even Microsoft Corp., which at one time was designing a very advanced, high-end set-top architecture based on its Microsoft TV platform, appears to be back-pedaling. After dismantling its Ultimate TV group earlier this year, the software giant is now developing technologies geared to low-end cable boxes such as Motorola's DCT1000 and DCT2000. At the cable show, Microsoft announced a new, interactive program guide, Microsoft TV IPG.

Calling Microsoft's latest move a "pretty significant change of strategies," Broadcom's Nelson stressed that the highly integrated BCM7115 device, manufactured in 0.13-micron process technology and using Broadcom's mixed-signal capabilities, is a "low-cost single-chip solution for mainstream cable boxes."

Support withdrawn

Broadcom has "stopped supporting" Microsoft TV, he said, after disappointing sales for an advanced interactive box based on the platform for TV Cabo, a Portuguese cable operator. The box used high-end Broadcom chips.

The BCM7115, in contrast, is built on Broadcom's highly successful BCM7015 and BCM7100, each used as an engine for low-cost mainstream digital set-tops, Nelson said. The BCM7015, with no integrated MIPS CPU core, is used in Motorola's DCT2000 and the BCM7100, with an 85-Mips processor core, drives cable set-tops manufactured by Pace and Pioneer, he added.

Newly integrated in the BCM7115 is support for PVR functions, including an IDE controller for connection to disk drives and a high-performance, 175-Mips RISC processor with enough horsepower to run more sophisticated applications. The chip also integrates QAM/QPSK transmission technology, MPEG-2 audio and video decoding, a USB host, an IEEE 1394 interface, an OpenCable-compliant point-of-deployment interface and V.90 soft-modem support.

Separately, Broadcom said this week that its BCM7020, a single-chip video decoder and graphics solution, and BCM7040, an MPEG-2 encoder, will be designed into TiVo Inc.'s next-generation Series2 digital video recorder. When cable operators are ready to add PVR to their set-tops, they will need an MPEG-2 encoding chip like the BCM7040, Nelson said.

The BCM7115, priced at $50 in quantities of 50,000, is sampling today. Built at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the chip is scheduled for volume production in the fourth quarter.