[opendtv] Inside Canmore: Intel plugs x86 into TVs
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:29:09 -0400
Here's something for those who want TVs to do more. Including
deblocking?
I think that Internet TV will work just fine if the congloms stream
their content on the Internet. As they are doing already. Or even
provide it for download only.
Conversely, seems to me that if the Internet content is the type that is
more readily done sitting up to a PC, highly interactive, people won't
bother using their TVs to access it.
Bert
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Inside Canmore: Intel plugs x86 into TVs
Chip shows x86 giant's growth as an SoC designer
Rick Merritt
(08/20/2008 11:58 PM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210102188
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Intel Corp.'s first x86-based chip for consumer
electronics is looking pretty darn good, and the next one could be hard
to beat. The CE 3100, aka Canmore, represents an initiative that speaks
to everything from Intel's growing system-on-chip capabilities to its
drive toward Internet TV, a concept that has left many pioneers dead by
the roadside.
The new chip sports a 3,000 Dhrystone MIPS x86 core, three DDR2 memory
channels and a graphics block from Imagination Technologies capable of
spitting out 13 million polygons a second in a chip dissipating less
than 10W. And that's using 90nm process technology and a three-year-old
notebook PC core.
The chip comes with a full software stack and reference design for use
in Blu-Ray players as well as set-tops and TVs for both the U.S. Tru2Way
cable spec and Europe's DVB standard. Samsung and Toshiba have said they
will design systems with Canmore and other giants including Sony have
expressed some level of interest.
Next up is Sodaville where Intel swaps in its 2W Atom x86 core and
leverages its 45nm process technology. The 2009-generation chip will be
part of a family of devices customized for various consumer systems.
"This is a really different chip for the consumer guys," said Steven
Wilson, principal analyst for consumer video technologies at ABI
Research (Oyster Bay, NY). "It has a of graphics capability and raw
performance you don't usually see in traditional CE gear."
Intel has not announced pricing for the chip which will be in production
in a few weeks, making it hard to gauge exactly where it might fit.
Wilson said it could at the very least be a good platform for high-end
Blu-Ray drives looking to add fancy user interface features and is well
timed for cable operators looking for powerful but low-cost systems to
run upcoming interactive services.
"Two or three years down the road this could be a very inexpensive
platform covering a range of products," said Wilson.
Beyond the graphics and CPU performance, Intel is touting its x86 as the
native silicon for the Web-the next big thing for today's digital TVs.
"The TV is at an early stage of delivering connectivity, so we think it
is a good time to get this going," said Eric Kim, general manager of
Intel's digital home group who announced Canmore at the Intel Developer
Forum Wednesday (Aug. 20).
Kim launched the chip along with a software framework developed in
partnership with Yahoo! for delivering Internet services on a TV via
software widgets. About a dozen companies including U.S. cable TV giant
Comcast and set-top maker Motorola have agreed to help define and manage
the software environment which Intel calls the Widget Channel.
"After flat panels and high definition, people want to bring the
Internet to the TV," said Patrick Barry, vice president of connected TV
services at Yahoo!
Mark Francisco, a Comcast fellow, said the cable operator sees the
Widget Channel as a complement to the Tru2Way services it and other U.S.
cable companies are starting to deploy. Tru2Way represents a set of
stable applications and services in a managed end-to-end cable
environment, while the Widget Channel could be an avenue for short-lived
applets customized by users and related to time-sensitive events such as
the Beijing Olympics.
"Intel's schedule for the chip and software is critical because the
cable operators are trying to roll out Tru2Way services this fall," said
Rick Doherty, principal of Envisioneering (Seaford, NY).
As for Blu-Ray, Intel's timing is perfect. If Intel makes gains in this
space, it will largely be at the expense of Sigma Designs whose
processor is used in most Blu-Ray drives today.
With the format war just settled, drive makers are focusing on how to
roll out a range of high-end to low cost drives. "Canmore has the
potential to grow the population of Blu-Ray players greatly because we
are still in an early adopter phase," said Andy Parsons, senior vice
president of advanced product development at Pioneer and marketing chair
of the Blu-Ray Association.
About six million Blu-Ray drives have shipped in the U.S. to date, most
of them built into Sony Playstation 3 consoles. With the format war
settled, there are now some 900 Blu-Ray titles, more than double the
number just six months ago.
So-called Blu-Ray Live players that can link to the Net are just hitting
the market with first products out from Samsung and Sony. Blu-Ray
players range from less than $300 to more than $800 today.
Canmore is Intel's most complex system-on-chip design to be released to
date. The company has been on a path of growing its SoC capabilities for
some time, forming last year a corporate SoC enablement group under Gadi
Singer, former head of EDA at the chip giant.
Intel has considered it part of its technology strategy to develop
common SoC flows and intellectual property libraries. In the wake of the
dotcom bust, Intel has divested interests in communications to focus its
energies on pushing its x86 core into everything from sub-2W mobile
devices to graphics and parallel supercomputers with its upcoming
Larrabee chip.
"They are doing exactly the right thing, pushing the x86 everywhere,"
said Fred Weber, former chief technology officer of archrival Advanced
Micro Devices who now heads a memory chip startup. "This is the sort of
thing I have been preaching for years," said Weber on hand for one IDF
session.
The Canmore designers got most of the IP blocks and tools they needed
from various Intel divisions, including the new SoC group, said Suri
Medapati, principal engineer and architect in Intel's digital home group
who led the design effort.
Most of the IP on Canmore comes from Intel's chip set and mobile groups.
The processor is the 800 MHz Dothan core from Centrino notebooks, and
the graphics is an Imagination Technologies core supporting OpenGL ES
2.0 also used by the mobile group. The chip set group provided cores for
2.5 GHz PCI Express, serial ATA 2.0, USB 2.0 and a gigabit Ethernet MAC.
A decode block started with technology acquired about three years ago
with Israeli startup O-Plus. Intel upgraded that core for a previous
part and enhanced it again for Canmore. It now handles MPEG2 and H.264
decode for up to two simultaneous 1080i streams at 60 frames/second. A
dual 300 MHz audio DSPs came from Tensilica.
Two other blocks were homegrown by the Canmore team--a display processor
for scaling and interlacing and a security processor. The latter block
handles conditional access keys for cable-TV card security and
accelerates AES, 3DES, RSA and other algorithms.
The chip also includes three 800 MHz DDR2 controllers, six 10-bit video
DACs and support for HDMI 1.3a.
The Canmore group created its own 90nm EDA chip design flow using a
combination of tools it designed itself, ones from other Intel groups
and third party tools. It uses some parts of a standard SoC flow created
by the corporate team under Singer.
The digital home team has already finished a 45nm design flow for its
next-generation parts which are well along in design. It has also helped
the corporate SoC group in an effort to define an Intel standard SoC bus
yet to be announced.
Intel hired Jim Crammond, a senior designer with a background at set-top
companies including Digeo and Moxie to help define the software stack
for the chip. The company partnered with VividLogic to port its Tru2Way
software to Canmore as part of a set-top reference design.
Blu-Ray software comes from Alticast, and DVB software comes from
Futarque along with software from other software and silicon partners on
the reference designs including Texas Instruments and Microtune.
The software stack is based on a standard Linux 2.6 kernel with Yahoo!
providing the widget engine to enable thirds-party applications.
Interestingly the middleware supports Microsoft Windows DRM, though
Windows has no other role in the platform.
The whole effort came together under Kim, former corporate marketing
officer of Samsung, hired three years ago by Intel. Kim clearly
leveraged his rolodex of contacts and knowledge of consumer electronics,
something Intel badly needed.
The new direction dwarfs the much narrower Viiv platform, a living room
PC initiative Intel had struggled to gain traction for over the last
several years. But it's still unclear how successful the new move will
be.
Kim got senior executives from Comcast, Disney, Sony and Yahoo to join
him on stage for the Canmore announcement singing the praises of the
move to Internet TV. "Comcast's appearance here is more an expression of
openness to new ideas than a real commitment," analyst Doherty said.
Intel has fallen flat in the consumer space before. Chief executive Paul
Otellini made a big splash at the Consumer Electronics Show a few years
ago, touting Intel silicon for microdisplays as the next big thing in
digital TV. About six months later, the company folded the initiative.
Otellini said some time ago Intel would debut Canmore at CES in 2008.
Apparently Kim convinced him to wait and roll out the chip at IDF in
August, hoping TV makers will roll out Canmore-based systems at CES in
2009.
Many others have tried and failed to deliver Internet TV. The former
Apple engineers who formed WebTV Networks were acquired by Microsoft
which still struggles to get traction for its various living room PC
concepts. 3Com and partners such as National Semiconductor debuted the
Audrey system and Geode processor for consumer Web devices which
promptly flopped.
Clearly consumers want Internet TV. Intel researcher Genevieve Bell
notes that 43 percent of people who watched SuperBowl 2008 had
simultaneous links to the Web on their home computers, and the latest
American Idol episode had 97.5 million viewers vote on their favorites
via cellphones and PCs.
People want internet TV in part because television is inherently a
social phenomena, said Bell. Now that TV makers are delivering a broad
range of 1080p HDTV sets, adding connectivity is a logical step for
vendors as well.
Whether Intel can deliver the platform for Web TV is unclear. Its latest
initiative clearly has a strong foothold with solid silicon, software
and partners. If the 90nm chip doesn't make a splash at the next CES,
the 45nm follow on will likely get some significant attention at CES in
2010.
All materials on this site Copyright (c) 2008 TechInsights, a Division
of United Business Media LLC. All rights reserved.
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