Vendors of General Purpose Video Technology

Contents

IP Cores
Chips
Boards
Software
Systems

• 4i2i
  • Location: Scotland
  • Founded: 1995
  • Notes: Until 2000 4i2i was the employer of Iain E G Richardson, H.264 video expert, author of H.264 and MPEG-4 Video Compression, and maintainer of the web site vcodex.com
  • Products:
    H.264 (MPEG4 Part 10) AVC Video Encoder IP Core is a 10.1 megapixel/second 56 MHz H.264 video encoder core. It requires 60k gates or 4500 Xilinx Virtex II slices.
    MPEG4 Video Codec IP Core is a 10.1 megapixel/second 58 MHz H.264 encoder/decoder. It requires 21k gates for decode and 58k gates for encode or 1300 Xilinx Virtex II slides for decode and 3000 Xilinx Virtex II slices for encode. The core requires 13k bytes of on-chip memory or 13 Xilinx Virtex II BRAMs for decode and 22 Xilinx Virtex II BRAMs for encode. The core is also capable of encoding and decoding H.261, H.263, and JPEG.
    H.264 Video Codec Software is a H.264 encoder/decoder. It is unclear what pixel rates are achieved. It is designed to run on a PC processor or a Broadcom/Alphamosaic VC-01 processor.
    4i2i also sells H.263 and H.261 codec software.
  • Customers:
    • 4i2i has over 100 IP core licensees.
    • NASA will use a 4i2i digital video encoder in space helmet mounted video cameras.
  • Partners:
    • 4i2i worked with LSI Logic to ensure compatibility with ZSP processor based systems before LSI Logic sold ZSP to VeriSilicon. Has demonstrated H.263, H.264, and MPEG-2 video (decode?).
    • 4i2i has implemented a high-definition H.264 video encoder in a single Xilinx FPGA chip.
• IndigoVision
  • Location: Scotland
  • Products:
    • Mainstream was IndigoVision's name for its suite of "silicon verified" IP cores. They are no longer available for licensing.
    • IndigoVision's primary business is in TCP/IP (internet protocol) networked CCTV video encoder and monitoring systems for security. I sometimes wonder if IndigoVision stays in the business of IP (intellectual property) cores just so that they can claim to sell "video systems IP" as well as "IP video systems".
  • Customers:
    • The Winbond W99702G CIF 30fps and W99802G VGA/D1 30fps MPEG-4 encoder/decoder chip for cell phones uses one or more IP cores from IndigoVision.
  • IndigoVision IP core products are distributed in Taiwan by Sinostar Technologies
• Sarnoff
  • Location: Princeton, New Jersey
  • Notes: Sarnoff is perhaps best known in the world of digital video for their test bitstreams used to verify the compliance of video systems to video coding standards. However, Sarnoff also develops and licenses digital video processor IP cores.
  • Products:
    Notes: Sarnoff semiconductor IP cores are designed to work in a system with an ARM, MIPS, or x86 host processor running Sarnoff-written software.
    H.264 / AVC Encoder / Decoder operates on Baseline Profile bitstreams at up to D1 resolution at 30 fps at an unspecified encoded bitrate, GOP pattern, and motion search range/algorithm. Gate count, size, clock speed, and power consumption unknown. This product is a combination of processor optimized software and hardware accelerator IP.
    H.264/AVC Decoder, a H.264 (AVC) Baseline profile decoder capable of 9.2 megapixels/second. This is implemented as a hardware accelerator for motion compensation, interpolation, inverse transform, quantization, and deblocking filtering that is meant to be attached to a microprocessor core and controlled by software calls.
    MPEG-4/H.263 SelectCore CIF Codec, capable of 3.0 megapixels/second. It can operate at MPEG-4 Simple profile levels 0-3 and H.263 profiles 0 & 3 at levels 10-50. Half-pel motion estimation is supported. Many other performance enhancements are configurable. This core requires 340k of data memory for CIF sequences and 240k of instruction memory and a processor with 32k data and instruction caches. Clock speed required of an ARM processor is 100-200 MHz for encode, depending on the IP core configuration and 100 MHz for decode.
    High Definition Audio/Video System Processor, a MPEG-2 decoder is capable of 62.2 megapixels/second. It takes in an a/v transport stream and also does Dolby AC-3 audio decode.
    MPEG-2 Audio/Video System Processor MPEG-2 decoder is capable of 10.4 megapixels/second at 81 MHz. It takes in an unscrambled DVD stream or MPEG-2 program stream and also does Dolby AC-3 audio decode.
    MPEG-4/H.263 SelectCore All Software CODEC is a MPEG-4 encoder/decoder that runs at 0.4 megapixel per second and is designed to run on ARM 9 or x86 processors. In ARM 9 it require 50 MHz for MPEG-4 encode, 14 MHz for MPEG-4 decode, 47 MHz for H.263 encode and 12 MHz for H.263 decode.
    MPEG-4/H.263 SelectCore CIF CODEC is a MPEG-4 encoder/decoder that runs at 3.0 megapixel per second and is destined to run on ARM 9 or x86 processors. In ARM 9 it requires 100-200 MHz for encode and 100 MHz for decode.
  • Partners:
    • Sarnoff provides ports of its video software optimized for use with MIPS Technologies processors, providing an unspecified level of video performance.
    • Sarnoff provides its video codec IP cores optimized for use with MIPS Technologies processors, supporting up to 640x480 resolution (Baseline profile?) at 30 fps.
• Chips & Media
  • Location: Seoul, South Korea
  • Sells chips and semiconductor IP cores for video, audio, CPU, DSP, PCI, and other peripherals
  • Targets digital TV reception, video-on-demand, video over IP, HD-DVD playback and personal video recording
  • Products:
    MPEG-2 MP@ML decoder at 40.6M pixels per second
    MPEG-2 MP@ML encoder at 20.3M pixels per second
    MPEG-2 MP@ML encoder/decoder at 10.2M pixels per second
    MPEG-2 MP@HL decoder at 31.1M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 SP@L3 decoder at 10.2M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 SP@L3 encoder at 10.2M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 SP@L3 encoder/decoder at 10.2M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 ASP@L5 decoder at 40.6M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 ASP@L5 encoder at 20.3M pixels per second
    MPEG-4 ASP@L5 encoder/decoder at 10.2M pixels per second
    H.264 BP@L1.3 decoder 3.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q1)
    H.264 BP@L1.3 encoder 3.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q1)
    H.264 MP@L3.0 decoder 10.2M pixels per second (available 2005/Q2)
    H.264 MP@L3.0 encoder 10.2M pixels per second (available 2005/Q2)
    H.264 MP@L3.0 encoder/decoder 10.2M pixels per second (available 2005/Q2)
    H.264 MP@L4.0 decoder 31.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q2)
    H.264 MP@L4.0 encoder 31.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q4)
    H.264 MP@L4.0 encoder/decoder 31.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q4)
    DivX v5.x decoder 10.2M pixels per second (available 2005/Q3)
    DivX v5.x decoder 31.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q3)
    WMV9 AP@L3 decoder 10.2M pixels per second (available 2005/Q3)
    WMV9 AP@L3 decoder 31.1M pixels per second (available 2005/Q3)
    also audio decoder and encoder cores
  • Vendors:
    • Chips & Media has licensed the ARC 605 processor core for use in a MPEG2 codec design.
  • Customers:
    • Freescale has licensed cores from Chips & Media and integrated them into an i.MX processor chip.
  • Partners:
    • Tsinghua-Novel Electronics of China is working with Chips & Media on a digital set-top box chipset for DTV in China.
• Ocean Logic
  • Location: Sydney, Australia
  • Vincenzo Liguori and Kevin Wong of Ocean Logic have written a DesignCon 2006 paper.
  • Products:
    H264-E Baseline HDTV 1080p H.264/AVC Encoder & Decoder Encodes in Baseline Profile, decodes the full set of H.264 coding tools used by the encoder, operates at 27 megapixels per second in a Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA. Does not encode non-raster ordered slices or macroblocks, which ensures that the bitstream can be decoded by a Baseline Profile or Main Profile decoder. Capable of 62.2 megapixel per second encode in an ASIC at 250 MHz. No host CPU is required. Supports CBR and VBR encoding. 129k gates and 100k bits of RAM for VGA, 178k gates and 100k bits of RAM for HDTV. Available in Verilog and VHDL. Available with a C simulation model. Ocean Logic has published benchmark results for its H264-E encoder core. This core primarily targets closed system applications.
    OL_H264MCE Baseline multichannel H.264/AVC Encoder Has the same features as the H264-E but the encoding capability can be divided among up to 6 SDTV streams at 30 fps or 20 CIF streams at 30 fps or a combination of sub-HDTV stream. OL_MPEG4 is a 12.2 megapixel/second MPEG-4 encoder that runs at 98 MHz. It requires 39k gates and 25k bytes of on-chip RAM.
  • Customers:
    • BeHere uses the OceanLogic H264 encoder/decoder core in its TotalView product.
  • Partners:
    • Ocean Logic develops video cores sold by CAST
• Innovative Semiconductors
  • Location: Sunnyvale, CA
  • No complete video encoder or decoder core is offered, but components of such chips, including a Huffman decoder and IDCT core, are offered.
  • ISI has delisted their SL264 H.264 level 3 SDTV baseline profile decoder product and seems presently to be focused on USB and other communication interface logic.
• eInfoChips (Ahmedabad, India)
  • eInfoChips is primarily a design services company
  • employs more than 100 DSP engineers
  • No complete video encoder or decoder core is offered, but many components of such cores, including a DCT, IDCT, and DDR SDRAM controller core, are offered.
  • Partners:
    • eInfoChips is a Texas Instruments third party solutions provider partner
• CAST
  • Location: New Jersey
  • Products:
    H.264-E Baseline H.264/AVC Video Encoder is a H.264 video encoder capable of 250 MHz in 0.13 um technology with 37 MHz required for 9.2 megapixel/second encoding using 129k gates and 106k bits of RAM. A Xilinx port is available. Capable of level 4.1 encode at 250 MHz. Operates independently of a microprocessor. Supports CBR and VBR output. Supports most intra prediction modes. Supports multiple slice encoding. Supports single slice encoding for content destined for Main profile decoders.
    MPEG4-E Video Encoder is a MPEG-4 video encoder capable of 114 MHz with 97.3 MHz required for 12.2 megapixel/second using 39k gates and 25k bits of RAM. A Xilinx port is available. The encoder encode I- and P- video object planes.
    MPEG4-MCE Multi-channel Video Encoder is a MPEG-4 video encoder supporting up to 16 channels and capable of 135 MHz in TSMC 0.13um technology in which it consumes 66.6 kgates and 25 kbits of RAM or 108 MHz in TSMC 0.18um technology in which it consumes 72.0 kgates and 25 kbits of RAM. The core provides 125 kpixels per second per megahertz. The encoder encode I- and P- video object planes.
  • CAST's products are distributed in Taiwan by Maojet Technology Corp
  • Notes: Cast offers many video processor component cores, including a tile-to-raster, raster-to-tile, Huffman encoder, Huffman decoder, DCT and IDCT cores. Also offered are JPEG and JPEG 2000 decoder and encoder cores.
  • Partners:
    • CAST sells video cores developed by Ocean Logic
• PixSil Technology
  • Location: Newport Beach, CA
  • PixSil is developing a Configurable and scalable decoder and encoder as a fabless chip company.
  • Presently (2005/May) PixSil Technology offers inverse integer transform, and context-adaptive variable-length coding (CAVLC) video decoder components as IP cores.
  • PixSil also offers training and multimedia design services.
• The Athena Group
  • Location: Gainesville, FL
  • Partners:
    • Athena is a member of the IBM IP Collaboration program.
  • The Athena Group sells many video processor component blocks, including DCT, IDCT, and FIR filters as well as pre/post processing blocks such as color space converters and data interleavers. Also available is a video cross correlation core for motion recognition and target detection applications.
• MetaVideo
  • Location: Los Gatos, CA
  • Products:
    MVIP4100 SDTV MPEG-2 decoder
  
  MVIP4200 HDTV MPEG-2 decoder
  MetaVideo also has a broad range of video cores for display control, de-interlacing, scan conversion, image enhancement, and wireless network control.
• Silicon Valley Technology Marketing, LLC
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Silicon Valley Technology Marketing is primarily a design services business
• intoPIX
  • Location: Belgium
  • Founded: 2005
  • JPEG 2000 encode and decode for FPGA-based broadcast and digital cinema applications
  • Products:
    • IPX-JPHD HD video JPEG 2000 encoder / decoder for broadcast
    • IPX-JP2K 2K video decoder for digital cinema
    • IPX-JP4K 4K video decoder for digital cinema
  • other supporting encryption, networking, and memory interface cores also available
  • Partners:
    • Xilinx is apparently intoPIX' preferred FPGA wheras Altera is apparently Barco's preferred FPGA
• Barco-Silex
  • Location: Belgium
  • Founded: 1934 as the Belgian American Radio Company (Barco)
  • Barco is in a wide range of markets including traffic, surveillance, broadcasting, presentation, simulation and virtual reality, edutainment, events, media, digital cinema, air traffic control, defense & security, medical imaging, avionics, and textiles
  • Barco-Silex is a system vendor with internal chip design capability
  • Barco has acquired many companies and sold/spun-out many divisions over the years
  • The Silex design services group develops and sells the following semiconductor and software IP products:
    BA132 MPEG-4 Simple Profile Level 5 Decoder, 12.2M pixels per second
    BA131 MPEG-4 Simple Profile Level 5 Encoder, 12.2M pixels per second
    BA151 MPEG-4 Simple Profile Level 3 Encoder software written for NXP Nexperia PNX1300 chip, capable of 2.3M pixels per second, supporting constant bitrate (CBR) and variable bitrate (VBR) operation.
    MPEG-4 Decoder software
    M-JPEG Decoder software
    H.264 Baseline Profile Encoder / Decoder software
    DCT / inverse DCT
    forward and reverse wavelet transforms
    JPEG and JPEG2000 encoders and decoders
    memory controllers
    audio and voice cores
  • Partners:
    • Altera and Barco have worked together on building demonstration systems and jointly marketing each other's products.
    • Eastman Kodak and Barco have a partnership to build and sell digital display projectors to movie theaters.
• Ateme
  • Location: France
  • The Ateme web site was down recently
  • Ateme also sells digital video software
  • Products:
    H.264 (AVC) encoder FPGA binary image for a single-chip standard definition resolution encoder.
    H.264 (AVC) VHDL core source code for real-time standard definition encode.
    H.264 component function blocks as VHDL IP cores for standard definition and high definition encoders. Including CABAC and CAVLC bitstream encoders, motion estimation, and deblocking filters.
    H.264 Baseline, Main, High Profile offline (non-real-time) encoder for PC platforms, accelerated by the Ateme encoder core. Encodes progressive or interlaced content and uses MBAFF and PAFF. Operates on content from QCIFF resolution up to 4096x2048 (level 5.1). Supports configurable picture groupings (GOP), configurable sub-pixel interpolation for motion estimation, selectable constant or variable bitrates (CBR or VBR) and dual-pass encoding. Includes pre-processing, including de-interlacing, noise filtering, and 3:2 pulldown). Also supports audio encoding.
    H.264 encoder for PCs with support for an optional acquisition/encoding board to enable real-time encoding and transmission.
    H.264 decoder for PCs, including all Main and Baseline profile features (CABAC, MBAFF, MPAFF, ASO, and more).
    H.264 decoder for Texas Instruments DSP chips.
    Windows Media Video encoder for Texas Instruments (TMS320C64x and TMS320DM642) DSP chips.
    Windows Media Video decoder for Texas Instruments (TMS320C64x and TMS320DM642) DSP chips.
    MPEG-4 encoder and decoder for Texas Instruments C64x and DM64x DSP chip families and PC platforms at up to CIF resolution. The core is also capable of decoding DivX 3.11, DivX 4, DivX 5, XviD, and 3ivx streams.
    MPEG-2 encoder and decoder for Texas Instruments C6000 DSP chip family. The software supports Main profile at Main level at up to 720x576 pixel resolution and 30 frames per second at up to 15 megabits per second with 4:2:0 chroma coding.
  • Partners:
    • Ateme has ported its video software to TI DaVinci chips.
    • Altera's Stratix II FPGAs were used by Ateme to create a real-time broadcast quality H.264 encoder system, demonstrated at the NAB2005 trade-show. The system, presumably, operates at SDTV resolution.
    • Ateme is partners with end-user security software vendor ObjectVideo
• Seda Solutions
  • Location: San Francisco, CA
  • IP cores are delivered as a combination of hardware accelerator logic and software
  • Products:
    RGB to YUV Conversion
    YUV to RGB Conversion
    Motion Estimation
    DCT / IDCT
    4x4 block transform
    Quantizer
    Inverse Quantizer
    Interpolation
    De-Block Filtering
    Variable Length Coding
    Post Filtering
  • The above products have been used to create MPEG-4 and H.264 offerings. It is unclear what performance level is achievable.
  • Seda is more a design services company than an IP company
• Silicon Laboratories
  • analog and mixed-signal chip maker
  • acquired Silembia in 2006 for $20M cash
    • Location: Rennes, France
    • Founded: 2004 by ex-Philips Semiconductor employees
    • Products:
      EMB5000 DVB-C and ITU J.83 Annex A,B,C digital cable receiver IP core.
      DVB-T mobile terrestrial receiver IP core
      EMB6500 DVB-H receiver IP core
      ISDB-T (segment 1 or 3) mobile terrestrial receiver IP core
      EMB4000 DVB-S and DSS demodulator IP core
      DVB-DSNG satellite channel receiver IP core
      ISDB-S satellite channel receiver IP core
      DVB-S2 satellite channel receiver IP core
      EMB6000 DVB-T receiver IP core
      ISDB-T (segment 13) receiver IP core
      E8VSB receiver IP core
      
    • sells the Embeddia product line:
      DVB-C cable channel receiver
      DVB-S / DSS satellite channel receiver
      DVB-DSNG satellite channel receiver
      ISDB-S satellite channel receiver
      DVB-S2 satellite channel receiver
      DVB-H mobile terrestrial receiver
      DVB-T receiver
      ISDB-T receiver (13-segments)
      ISDB-T (1 or 3 segments) mobile terrestrial receiver
      E8VSB ATSC receiver

DSP (software programmable) processor core vendors

• ARM
  • Location: Cambridge, England
  • Acquisitions:
    • Artisan standard cell library vendor 2004 $1B
    • Adelante, a 25-person Belgian company with a highly configurable digital signal processor architecture 2003.
  • Products:
    OptimoDE configurable digital signal processor core, derived from the Adelante acquired technology.
  • Licensees:
    • Broadcom has licensed Optimode
    • Thomson has licensed Optimode
    • LG Electronics has licensed Optimode
    • NeoMagic
    uses ARM RISC cores
• Imagination Technologies
  • Location: Hertfordshire, UK
  • Target Markets:
    • digital TV
    • set top boxes
    • mobile handheld devices
    • car navigation and entertainment systems
  • Products:
    MSVDX PowerVR H.264 Main, High, and Baseline Profile Level 4.1, MPEG-2 MP@HL, VC-1 Advanced, Main, and Simple Profile Level 3, MPEG-4 Simple Profile Level 3, DivX HD, WMV9 MP@HL, MPEG-1 decoder capable of 62.2 million pixels per second running at 150 MHz, supporting trick play and error concealment and recovery.
    PowerVR Vigo Mobile TV demodulator supporting DVB-H, T-DMB, and DAB
    PowerVR MBX graphics core.
    PowerVR PDP (Pixel Display Pipeline) display controller.
    PowerVR TVE digital TV encoder for PAL, NTSC, S-Video, RGB, YUV display.
    Metagence META multi-threaded RISC/DSP core.
    Ensigma UCC (Universal Communications Coprocessor) complete DVB decode system.
    Prism personal media player (PMP) IP core with video encode and multi-standard video decode support all at SDTV resolution as well as DVB-H, T-DMB, and ISDB-T mobile TV receiver functionality.
    
  • Customers:
    • The PowerVR MBX core can be integrated with Texas Instruments' OMAP 2 core in TI ASICs for mobile devices.
    • The Texas Instruments' OMAPV2230 UMTS chip for 3G handsets includes a PowerVR MBX Lite Graphics Core.
    • The Samsung SPH-M7000 mobile phone uses the Intel 2700G "Marathon" multimedia accelerator chip supporting up to 1M polygons per second for 3D games. The 2700G chip includes the PowerVR MBX graphics core.
    • The PowerVR MBX Lite 2D/3D graphics core powers the Freescale i.MX31 mobile entertainment multimedia processor. A Hantro 5250 MPEG-4 encoder core is used in the same chip.
    • Intel has licensed the "Eurasia" architecture of the PowerVR core and a multistandard video codec core. Eurasia includes advanced polygon shading technology.
  • Partners:
    • ARM
    • NEC
    • ST
    • TI
      Built into TI OMAP devices for cell phones.
    • Microsoft
    • others
  • Subsidiaries:
    • PowerVR sells a has a multi-format core for WMV8, WMV9, MPEG2, MPEG4 (H.264 support listed by marketing, not yet by engineering). Also provided is Linux, Windows CE, and Windows Mobile 5.0 (with Direct3D) driver support.
    • Metagence
• Tensilica
  • Tensilica is a designer of general purpose CPUs, sold as synthesizable IP cores, with a particular strength in their ability to be customized through the addition of proprietary function logic.
  • First video specific product released in 2005
  • Products:
    Diamond 388VDO is a 2 Xtensa programmable core with codec software for encoding MPEG-4 ASP and deocding H.264 MP, BP, MPEG-4 ASP, VC-1/WMV9, or MPEG-2 at D1 pixel rates. Tensilica Video Engine is a 2 Xtensa LX core offering of software and hardware capable of 10.4 million pixels / second (SDTV resolution) decode of H.264 Main Profile (level 3) at 5.4 Mbps, MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP), MPEG-2, or VC-1 (WMV9) Main Profile at 200 MHz, requiring 10.5 square millimeters in a 0.13um process technology.
  • Customers:
    • NTT Electronics uses an Xtensa processor core inside the image processing ASIC for a JVC GR-HD-1 HD camcorder
    • Nvidia has licensed the Xtensa LX core
    • AMD/ATI has licensed the Xtensa core
    • Seiko Epson has licensed Xtensa for use in imaging chips
    • Stretch uses Xtensa as the core CPU for its reconfigurable processor
    • LG Electronics has used Xtensa for the digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) project of the Korean government
    • AFA Technologies
    • Hudson Soft
    • Intel
    • Nethra
    • Beijing NuFront Software Technology
    • Olympus
    • Penstar
    • PnpNetwork Technologies
    • Silicon Optix
    • Sony
    • ST
    • XM Radio
  • Partners:
    • Tata Elxsi is an authorized design center for Tensilica in Bangalore, India
    • Ittiam developed the software for Tensilica's video engine product offering.
    • Silicon Image / SciWorx uses multiple Xtensa LX cores in its video processor cores.
    • Tensilica is a member of the IBM IP Collaboration program.
    • Xtensa V cores are available directly to ASIC IP library customers of NEC Electronics America.
    • eInfoChips develops software at its India offices for Tensilica
    • InterVideo has ported MPEG-4 encoding and decoding software at CIF and QCIF resolution at 15fps to Xtensa.
• Ceva
  • Location: Herzelia, Israel
  • Products:
    H.264, MPEG2, and MPEG4 video software
    CEVA-X1620 software programmable VLIW-SIMD dual-MAC 16-bit DSP processor core
    Mobile-Media2000 mobile multimedia platform supporting WMV9 at unspecified performance as well as H.263, H.264, MPEG2, and MPEG4 encoding and decoding software at up to D1 pixel rate on a CEVA-X1620 processor with audio and RTOS support as well.
  • Customers:
    • DigiBee Microsystems has licensed the CEVA-X1620 for use in a single chip baseband and application processor chip for wireless devices
    • Augusta Technology (formerly Alliantek) has licensed the CEVA-X1620 for use in portable multimedia chips
    • Spreadtrum Communications uses a CEVA-X DSP in TD-SCDMA baseband processor chips
    • Sharp uses Xpert-Teak for portable multimedia devices
    • Zoran uses a CEVA-TeakLite core for the servo controller in DVD chips
  • Partners:
    • ASTRI develops audio codec software for low end CEVA-TeakLite cores
    • Ceva is a member of the IBM IP Collaboration program.
• StarCore
  • Founded: 2002 as a joint venture between Agere, Freescale, and Infineon
  • Shut down: 2006
  • Products:
    SC2000 (600 MHz in 90nm processes) 6 stage pipeline DSP core.
    SC3000 (1 GHz in 90nm processes) 12 stage pipeline DSP core.
    
  • Customers:
    • Freescale's MSC8144 chip used four 1-GHz StarCore cores
    • Samsung Semiconductor licensed the StarCore SC1000 and SC2000 cores for use in mobile multimedia chips.
  • Partners:
    • StarCore implemented a H.264 video decoder system based around a StarCore SC2400 and a Hantro 6100 video decoder core. Capable of D1 resolution, it performs CIF (352x288) at 30 fps with 64 MHz. H.264 encoder, MPEG-4 encoder and decoder, and MPEG-2 encoder and decoder are planned.
    • StarCore was a member of the IBM IP Collaboration program.
• ARC International
  • Location: Elstree, England
  • Products:
    ARC Video Subsystem MJPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, H.264 decoder. 260k gates. H.264 D1 resolution requires 166 MHz and 44 mW in 0.13um. MPEG-4 D1 resolution requires 135 MHz and 36 mW in 0.13um. Internal datapaths are 128 bits wide with 16-bit SIMD operations.
    ARC 700 CPU with SIMD extensions. Capable of H.264 Baseline Profile at D1 resolution and 30 fps at 166 MHz. Runs at 533 MHz in TSMC 0.13um LVLK-OD process worst-case. 2.36 mm² with no memories. ARC has published performance data for many codecs.
    
  • Customers:
    • Conexant has licensed the ARC-600 core and MQX real-time operating system (RTOS).
    • Atmel licensed ARC Video to create multimedia handheld devices.
    • Broadcom signed a multi-year, comprehensive licensing agreement with ARC for system-on-chips (SoCs) for "high-growth" consumer applications.
    • Chips & Media uses an ARC 605 processor core in its own digital set-top box chips an IP cores targeted at high-volume applications.
    • Fujitsu uses an ARC 700 processor core in its SmartMPEG chips for set-top boxes from companies such as Digenius, GSS, Grocos, Conrad, Medion, and LaSat.
    • Siano uses an ARC processor in its SMS1000 mobile digital TV receiver chip.
    • Sony Semiconductor has licensed an ARC processor core with DSP extensions for "next-generation consumer electronic devices".
    • some Toshiba digital cameras use third-party chips with ARC processor cores.
    • some Hewlett-Packard digital cameras use third-party chips with ARC processor cores.
  • Partners:
    • Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft uses the ARC 625D core in its own DVB-H chipset intellectual property, which it shares with ARC.
  • Acquisitions:
    • Alarity
      • Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
      • existing product lines were discontinued after the acquisition as Alarity focused strictly on codec development for ARC processors.
      • Products:
        JPEG2000 encoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500 chip
        MPEG-4 decoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500 chip
        MPEG-4 encoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500 chip
      • was distributed in Taiwan by Intelligent Control Technology (iCT)
• MIPS Technologies
  • Location: Mountain View, CA
  • MIPS cores make excellent host processors and/or audio processors in digital video chips, but not great digital video processors. I have long been waiting to see who MIPS will eventually partner with in order to show its customers a high performance digital video solution.
  • Products:
    MIPS-3D SIMD FPU extensions accelerate 3D graphics
    24K is a good host processor
    24KE has DSP extensions that make it a good host / audio processor
    4KE processors are good audio processors. The 4KEc is about 1.0 mm^2 in 0.13um technology.
  • MIPS Technologies has ported MP3, Dolby ProLogic, AAC, and SRS TruSound XT software to MIPS32 processors and had the software certified by Dolby Labs.
  • Except at low pixel rates, no products shipping today perform digital video encoding or decoding on a MIPS instruction set processor. The MIPS RISC instruction set is general-purpose, not specialized for video processing. Despite its lack of video processing strength, MIPS instruction set processors have gained a reputation as good processors for "living room" applications. Such applications include video game systems and television set-top boxes. In the chips for such applications, the MIPS processor typically performs system management and host tasks that are not critical to real time video performance.
  • Customers:
    • For use in set-top box chips Cheertek has licensed the 4KEc core and MIPS Technologies' Dolby® Digital AC3 and Dolby Prologic II audio decoder software.
    • NXP is a licensee of 4KE core for use in set-top box chips and PC TV tuners
    • Magima is a licensee of the 4Kc core for use in set-top box chips
    • Huaya Micro is a licensee of the 4Kc core for use in set-top box chips
    • Adimos wireless Video Module multimedia networking chips include a MIPS 4KEp core.
    • ASUSTeK Computers uses the MIPS 4KEc and 4KEp cores in audio and multimedia chips.
    • ATI is a MIPS (core? or architecture?) licensee for use in set-top box chips.
    • Broadcom uses its own high performance processor designs that implement the MIPS instruction set in its set-top box chips. Broadcom acquired its own line of high performance MIPS processor designs when it acquired SiByte.
    • Cirrus Logic (or were the MIPS licenses transferred to Magnum?) uses the MIPS M4K and 4KE cores in its DVD and PVR chips.
    • Entropic Communications uses the MIPS 4KEm core in its video home networking chips.
    • ESS Technology uses the MIPS 4Kc core in its consumer video product chips.
    • Genesis Microchip uses the MIPS 4KEc core in its digital TV chips.
    • LSI Logic uses MIPS instruction set processors in many of their digital video chips.
    • Micronas uses the MIPS 24K core in digital TV and set-top box chips. Micronas uses the Lexra LX4280 processor core in other TV and set-top box chips.
    • Motorola Broadband Communications Sector uses MIPS instruction set processors in its set-top box chips and products.
    • NEC Electronics uses its own design of high performance processors that implement the MIPS instruction set in its personal video recorder and DVD recorder chips.
    • NeoMagic uses MIPS 4K processor cores in its handheld internet appliance chips.
    • NXP uses MIPS instruction set processors in its Nexperia video chips.
    • Pixelworks uses the MIPS 4KEc and M4K cores in its television and multimedia projector chips.
    • PMC-Sierra uses its own high performance processor designs that implement the MIPS instruction set in its chips for a range of markets, including set-top boxes. PMC-Sierra acquired its own line of high performance MIPS processors when it acquired QED.
    • Scientific Atlanta uses the MIPS 24Kc core in their digital set-top box chips.
    • Sony is a MIPS architecture licensee. Sony's commitment to the MIPS instruction set has come into question since its latest entertainment chip developments are based around the PowerPC architecture.
    • Sunplus has licensed the MIPS 4KEc and 4Kp cores for use in DVD, VCD, and S-VCD player chips.
    • Toshiba including Toshiba America Electronic Components implements its own high performance processors the execute the MIPS instruction set in a wide range of chips for a wide range of applications.
    • Wipro Technologies has access to the MIPS 4KEc and 64-bit 4Kf cores for the purpose of supporting joint MIPS customers.
    • Zoran uses the MIPS 4KE cores in their digital camera, digital TV, and DVD chips. Zoran is also a licensee and has used Lexra processor cores in the same line of chip products.
  • Partners:
    • MIPS Technologies is a member of the IBM IP Collaboration program.
    • MIPS' products are distributed in Taiwan by Sinostar Technologies
• Improv Systems
  • Location: Beverly, MA
  • Founded: 1997
  • Improv executives and managers founded Vivace Semiconductor to make video chips using Improv Systems DSP processor technology.
  • Products:
    Jazz configurable DSP cores
    Crescendo Jazz-based media processor DSP cores. ~0.1W in 0.13um for 500k gates for H.264 decode D1 30 fps at 150 MHz
    
  • Customers:
    • NXP
    • STMicroelectronics
    • Kawasaki LSI U.S.A.
    • Conexant Systems
    • Thrane & Thrane
    • TAK'ASIC
    • Silicon Motion
    • ITRI
  • Partners:
    • ARM
    • MIPS Technologies
    • Wind River Systems
    • GAO Research
    • Denali Software
    • ARM / Artisan
    • Virage Logic
    • Magma
    • Synopsys
    • D&R
    • EEMBC
    • ECL
    • VCX
    • VSI Alliance
• Silicon Hive
  • Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • A Philips technology incubator company relying on Philips' patents
  • Sells programmable "silicon accelerators" as IP cores, with the goal of using transistors as efficiently as a hardwired core, but with benefits of programmability
  • Targeting "media processing" (video) and "channel processing" (wireless) devices
  • Products:
    Avispa-CH1: Scalable C-programmable ULIW communications processor
    Avispa-IM2: General purpose C-programmable ULIW data processor
    Moustique-IC1: C-programmable SIMD & ULIW processor for camera applications
    Moustique-IC2: C-programmable SIMD & ULIW processor for camera applications
    
  • Customers:
    • Agere has licensed the Avispa IP core for use in unspecified SoC products
    • Posdata uses Avispa-CH1 in a mobile WiMax terminal chip
• Module Research Centre
• Videantis
  • Location: Hannover, Germany
  • A technology spin-out from the University of Hannover
  • primarily targeting surveillance applications for now
  • Products:
    v-MP2000 HD high definition video processor core. Capable of 62.2 megapixels per second decode of H.264 (Main profile?), MPEG-2, or WMV9 using a 3 core configuration, depending on bitstream processing support from an external general purpose processor (e.g. ARM, MIPS, etc.) connected through a dual-port RAM. Runs at 300 MHz in 0.13um technology. 450k gates logic for 3 cores, 11 square millimeters for 3 cores, including RAMs in 0.13um technology. Comes complete with software available for HD decode and SD encode of H.264 (AVC) (which profile?), MPEG-4 ASP, DivX, MPEG-4 SP, WMV-9, VC-1, MPEG-2, (and motion JPEG?).
    v-MP2000 M mobile video processor core. Capable of 10.4 megapixels per second decode of H.264 Baseline profile at 200 MHz, depending on bitstream processing support from an external general purpose processor (e.g. ARM, MIPS, etc.) connected through a dual- port RAM. 120k gates logic, 2.61 square millimeters including RAMs in 0.13um technology. Consumes 90 mW at 200 MHz. Comes complete with software available for encode and decode of H.264 (AVC) (which profile?), MPEG-4 ASP, DivX, MPEG-4 SP, H.263, WMV-9, VC-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, (and motion JPEG?).
    v-MP 1000
    A surveillance software package including region of interest detection, object tracking, support for H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, and JPEG2000.
  • Former Products:
    HiBRID-SoC software programmable multimedia processor core capable of being programmed for H.264/AVC, MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile & Simple Profile, JPEG2000, and M-JPEG. Consists of three cores: a 16-way by 8-bit SIMD datapath with a row or column addressable data storage array, a 64-bit VLIW processor, and a 32-bit RISC core. Runs at 145 MHz and consumes 81 square millimeters in a .18um process.
• Infineon
  • Location: Munich, Germany
  • Infineon makes many semiconductor products, including memory, and with an apparent emphasis on communications and networking.
  • Products:
    modulators and front-end DVB-T (COFDM), ATSC, and ISDB-T tuner chips
    offers TriCore 1 32-bit software programmable DSP processor core
    • 300 MHz in 0.13um process technology
    • 2.2 sq mm including CPU, code, and data memory interfaces but not the, presumably configurable-sized, code and data memories themselves.
    • 0.65mW/MHz for Dhrystone 2.1
    • TriCore is available as a synthesizable soft core or as off-the-shelf chips manufactured by Infineon.
  • Acquisitions:
    • SciWorx (formerly known as Sican) a 74.9% ownership stake in 2000.
• Avieon
  • Products:
    Neuron 1 is a complete SoC design sold as an IP core available with DVB-H and H.264 software. It consists of four Multimedia Signal Processors (MSP), and ARM 9 CPU, and AHB peripherals.
    The MSP is a proprietary architecture described as Same Instruction Different Operation (SIDO). Each MSP is 50K gates and about 1 mm square using .13um standard cell technology.
• On Demand Microelectronics
  • Location: Vienna, Austria
  • Founded: 2002
  • Founded as a spin-off from Analog Devices
  • Products:
    SVEN "platform" encompassing a video control processor (VCP) and a VLIW / SIMD vector signal processor (VSP) with multiple execution units along with software for signal demodulation, MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264 bitstream extraction, bitstream decoding, deinterlacing, scaling, and noise filtering all at up to 1080i resolution (presumably 30 frames per second)
    Scalable Video Processor (SVP)
    • 8 32-bit PEs in 0.13um at 200 MHz is 350 mW (unknown video performance)
    • H.264 PAL decode with 16 16-bit PEs at 2.55 mm^2
    
    cores to handle demodulation, decoding and image processing
  • Has two "big player" flat screen TV maker licensees (2005/07)
  • VSP license fee is $300k-$700k with $100k-$200k for each software library
  • Later became a chip company and has since ceased operations.
• InterQoS
  • Location: Hong Kong
  • funded by the Hong Kong government
  • originally in the networking/communications space
  • modifying its multiprocessor NPU architecture with 8 processing engines and 1 RISC for H.264 video algorithms, software development work is in progress
• Toshiba MeP (Media Embedded Processor)
  • 32-bit RISC software programmable image, audio, and video processors available as synthesizable RTL cores.
  • An internal IP platform similar to Matsushita Unifier or NEC platformOViA.
  • Products:
    MeP-c1 five stage pipeline performs MPEG-2 decode at HDTV resolution at 133 MHz or simultaneous (presumably SDTV resolution) MPEG-2 encode and decode at 150 MHz
    MeP-c2 five stage pipeline acts as a single chip DVD player at 142 MHz and used for Visconti image recognition at 150 MHz.
    MeP-c3 five stage pipeline used as a multimedia accelerator for mobile terminals at 125 MHz among other applications.
    MeP-h1 nine stage pipeline 1 GHz in 65nm technology (presumably in a Toshiba fab)
    MeP-c4 under development
• Dresden Silicon
  • Location: Dresden, Germany
  • funded to productize technology developed at Technische Universität Dresden.
  • Software programmable IP cores will be delivered complete with software for major video standards.
  • First IP core product available in summer 2006
  • Partners:
    • Heinrich-Hertz-Institut
• Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center (IMEC)
  • Location: Leuven, Belgium
  • IMEC is a general purpose nanotechnology research center
  • Products:
    Architecture for Dynamically Reconfigurable Embedded System (ADRES) is a VLIW processor with a reconfigurable logic array. Good H.264 decoder performance is claimed, but no specific performance numbers are published.
• Lenslet
  • Location: Herzelia Pituach, Israel
  • Founded: 1999
  • The OmniDesign web site has gone down. I am curious to know what happened to the company.
  • makes optical digital signal processor chips, claiming up to 8,000 GMACs
  • Products:
    EnLight 256 8000 GMAC per second fixed point DSP chip. Operates internally by optical switching. Promises great performance on video applications, though no specific applications or performance have been quoted.
• Volcano Media Chips
  • Founded: 2005
  • Developing a multi-format programmable video processor core for H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2, and H.263 video encode and decode.
  • Acquired by Nemochips

EDA tools

These companies' products are not quite IP cores, but instead electronic design automation (EDA) tools that generate customized IP cores

• Celoxica
  • Location: Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK
  • Products:
    C to RTL
    C to FPGA
  • Partners:
    • Celoxica is a member of the TI TMS320 third party partner program.
• Synfora
  • Location: Mountain View, CA
  • Started using technology developed at Hewlett-Packard research labs in Colorado.
  • Products:
    PICO Express takes in nested loops of C code and puts out RTL for a "pipelined processor array" that can act as a coprocessor / accelerator in a chip along with a host processor.
    PICO Flex is still in development, but is expected to create a stand-alone VLIW processor that is not dependent on another host processor.
  • partners with Cadence
  • Member of:
    • Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA)
    • EDA Consortium (EDAC)
    • Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI)
    • OCP International Partnership (OCP-IP)
• PACT XPP Technologies
  • Location: Munich, Germany
  • architecture consisting of ALU, RAM, and I/O processing elements configurable as in an FPGA
  • PACT XPP offers a chip (and reference design) but also their elements as IP
  • Also available/required is PACT's design software
  • Also available is hardware/software IP to implement video codecs as an AMBA bus co-processor
• Spiral Gateway
  • Location: Edinburgh, UK
  • low power is the mantra for Sprial Gateway products
  • Products:
    Hybrid IP cores components for algorithms such as sum of absolute differences (SAD) motion estimation (ME) search, and discrete cosine transform (DCT)
    RICA (Reconfigurable Instruction Cell Array) software programmable architecture for low-power digital signal processing applications
• Poseidon Design Systems
• Products:
  Triton Tuner embedded application performance analyzer and architecture configuration tool
  Triton Builder accelerator coprocessor builder

Transmission and Interface cores

• Commsonic
  • Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • founded in 2000
  • Products:
    CCMS0009 DVB-T modulator
    CMS0014 DVB-S2 adaptive APSK demodulator
    OFDM, QAM/PSK, and other modulators and demodulators
  • Partners:
    • Built SkyPlug DVB-S2 demodulator / decoder for FPGAs around the CMS0014 with TurboConcept decoder, verified it with the Zarlink ZL10038 tuner.
• TurboConcept
  • Location: France
  • founded 1999
  • Products:
    TC1000 / TC1000-xX DVB-RCS decoder
    TC4000 DVB-S2 low density parity check (LDPC) decoder
  • Partners:
    • Built SkyPlug DVB-S2 demodulator / decoder for FPGAs around the TC4000 with Commsonic demodulator, verified it with the Zarlink ZL10038 tuner.
• Apical
  • Location: London, UK
  • specilists in image enhancement algorithms
  • Products:
    • iridix C3-5 dynamic range compression
    • iridix H3-5 dynamic range compression
    • iridix C5 color correction
    • iridix H5 color correction
    • iridix C5NR noise reduction
    • iridix C4-5 fine detail preservation
    • iridix H4-5 fine detail preservation
    • C-NLS1 non-linear sharpening
  • Customers:
    • Nikon
      • Coolpix cameras
    • Sony
      • Alpha SLR cameras
    • Sony Ericsson
      • A1404S handset
      • W31S handset
    • Samsung
      • SCH-V700 portable media player handset

Semiconductor giants
Computer graphics (polygon) chip vendors
Flat panel, LCD, projector display controller chip vendors
Communications chip vendors
Media networking chip vendors
System vendors with their own fabs
Taiwanese consumer chip vendors
Chinese consumer chip vendors
Multi-market ASIC vendors
DSP chip vendors
Programmable logic chip vendors
Tuner chip vendors
CMOS image sensor chip vendors
Analog chip vendors

Intel

• Location: Santa Clara, CA
• A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
• Acquisitions:
  • Intel acquired the UK based business of radio frequency (RF) front-end (tuner and demodulator) chips for consumer products from Zarlink in 2005 for $70M. The Zarlink products include:
    • SL1925 zero IF L-band Tuner for DSS and DVB Satellite Receivers (symbol rates 1-45 MS/s)
    • SL1935 zero IF L-band Tuner for DSS and DVB Satellite Receivers with PLL Synthesizer
    • ZL10036 single-chip digital satellite tuner
    • ZL10038 advanced modulation DVB-S2 compliant satellite tuner
    • ZL10039 single-chip satellite tuner for FTA (free-to-air) satellite DTV receivers. This chip competes directly with the Conexant CX24301 and CX24302.
    • ZL10060 tuner chip for receiving DVB, cable, terrestrial, and analog television
    • ZL10313 demodulator
    • ZL10355 demodulator for DVB-T portable TVs
  • Digital television and display controller chip maker Oplus (Israel), 2005, 100 employees, $100M, will continue selling products under the Oplus name.
• Divisions:
  • Intel China Research Center, in Beijing, has created the Zephyros "concept PC" for videoconferencing and other next generation video and multimedia applications.
• Groups:
  • Intel is a member of the Mobile DTV Alliance

Samsung Semiconductor

• Products:
  S5M8600 DVB-H CMOS RF tuner for mobile phones
  S3C4F10 DVB-H and DVB-T channel decoder with an unspecified CPU for mobile phones
  S5K53BE CMOS image sensor, 1/5.8 inch aperture size, 640x480 resolution
  S5K3AAE CMOS image sensor, 1/3.2 inch aperture size, 1280x1024 resolution
  S5K4AAF CMOS image sensor, 1/4 inch aperture size, 1280x1024 resolution
  S5K3BAF CMOS image sensor, 1/3.2 inch aperture size, 1600x1200 resolution

Texas Instruments

• Location: Dallas, TX
• NYSE: TXN
• Products:
  DTV1000 and DTV1001 "Hollywood" mobile phone chip with a DVB-H / ISDB-T tuner, OFDM demodulator, and video decoder in an OMAP architecture. Capable of 24 to 30 fps video. Implemented in 90nm technology.
  TMS320C6455 fixed-point digital signal processor at 720 MHz to 1 Ghz with support for DDR2 SDRAM at 500 MHz. Samples available now, production quantities available later.
  TMS320C6414T, TMS320C6415T, TMS320C6416T fixed-point digital signal processors at 600 MHz to 1 GHz. Chips ranging from $99 to $250.
  TMS320DM6443 / TMS320DM6446 "DaVinci" digital media processors perform 62.2 million pixel per second (1080i HDTV) MPEG-2 decode and 27.6 million pixel per second (720p HDTV) MPEG-4 Simple Profile encode (with unspecified bitrate, GOP, and other coding parameters). Basedon a 300 MHz ARM926EJ-S with a 600 MHz TI C64x DSP core, a video display controller, and in the DM6446 a CCD image sensor controller.
  TMS320DM642 digital media processor runs at 720 MHz. Video conferencing devices with 1280x720 resolution (at an unspecified frame rate) can be implemented with multiple DM642 chips. TI has written software for the VC-1, H.264 (AVC), and other coding standard to run on the DM642 chip. Processor cores share a 133 MHz SDRAM interface.
  TMS320DM342 digital multimedia processor, capable of MPEG-4 video (decode?) at 720x480 resolution at 30 fps. Based on a 126 MHz ARM 926 RISC CPU and a 100 MHz TI C54x DSP core with a 180 MHz iMX SIMD image processing engine. Processors share a 32-/16- bit 100 MHz SDRAM interface.
  TMS320DM270 digital multimedia processor, capable of MPEG-4 video (decode?) at 640x480 resolution at 30 fps. Based on a 88 MHz ARM 7 RISC CPU and a 100 MHz TI C54x DSP core with a 180 MHz iMX SIMD image processing engine. Processors share a 32-/16- bit 120 MHz SDRAM interface.
  OMAPV2230 dual-mode UMTS baseband processor and application processor chip for 3G wireless phones. (Encodes? and decodes?) video at VGA (640x480) resolution at 30 fps with an unspecified video coding standard and bitrate, while operating a 5 megapixel camera and performing other 2-way real-time multimedia functions.
  OMAPV2430 performs the same functions as the OMAPV2230, but with the same IVA 2 video accelerator technology from DaVinci TMS320DMx chips. Includes an ARM1136 RISC host processor core.
  The TI DDP3020 is an coprocessor ASIC for DLP chip based systems. Its "BrilliantColor" technology enhances the brightness of mid tone colors. This technology is similar to chips offered by Genoa Color Technologies. The DDP3020 supports SVGA, XGA, 720p, WXGA, and SXGA+ resolutions. Customers for this chip include:
  • Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America uses the DDP3020 in video projectors.
  
  TPS65150 power supply chip for large sized TFT-LCD displays priced at $2.60
  many other chip products serving a broad range of applications and functions
• Customers:
  • NEC uses the OMAPV2230 in FOMA 3G wireless handsets.
  • Panasonic uses the OMAPV2230 in FOMA 3G wireless handsets.
  • TI Digital Media processors are used in Archos portable personal video recorders.
  • Hundreds of products from many digital video product companies use DLP technology either for forward projection or rear projection devices.
  • Tut Systems' Astria line of low bit rate MPEG-2 and "MPEG-4 AVC" broadcast head-end video "processor" equipment uses the TI TMS320DM642 and TMS320C6415 video DSPs.
  • The Humax RG100 set top box, including a satellite receiver, IPTV receiver, and personal video recorder uses MPEG-4, H.264, and Windows Media 9 on a TI TMS320C64x series chip, which has the DM642 processor. The set top box presumably operates at SDTV resolution. Also, presumably the three video coding standards mentioned above can all be decoded in real-time though it is unclear which standards are used for the real-time encode required for the personal video recorder functionality.
  • The Inlet Technologies Fathom 2.0 product uses a TI TMS320C64x chip for VC-1 encode for the video post production market.
• Partners:
  • Ateme has ported video software to TI DaVinci chips.
  • Ittiam Systems ports a range of its video software to TI DaVinci chips.
  • UB Video was one of the first software developers to port H.264 software to TI C64x processors.
• Groups:
  • TI is a member of the Mobile DTV Alliance

Infineon

• Products:
  TUA6041 and TUA6045 3 to 5.5 volt tuners for laptops, USB dongles, and PDAs, including the intermediate frequency (IF) and RF functions in a single chip with automatic gain control. Supports PAL, SECAM, NTSC, DVB-C, DVB-T, T-DMB, DAB, ISDB-T and ATSC digital TV standards.

Renesas Technology

• large Japanese chip maker with products serving diverse markets
• Sells chips with its own internal SuperH general-purpose processor architecture implemented in cores such as the SH-2.
• Products:
  VPU4 video processing unit accelerator with support for MPEG-4 simple profile and H.264 (AVC) Baseline profile at 10.4 million pixels per second.

STMicroelectronics

• 50,000 employees
• dominant vendor of satellite receiver set-top-box chips
• Products:
  STx5300 MPEG-2 decoder for low-cost STBs and DVD recorders based on a 300 MHz ST231 CPU core. Pin compatible with STi5100. Priced at $11.
  STB5525 and STB5524 set-top box (STB) decoder chips supporting dual TV and digital video recorder (DVR) functions for satellite, cable, and terrestrial STB receivers, including a serial ATA disk drive interface. Based on a 300MHz ST231 CPU core. Priced at $15 and $14.
  STB7100 decoder, including a SH4 and two media processors, for H.264 (AVC) high profile at level 4, VC-1, WMV9, or dual streams of MPEG-2 all at HDTV resolution with supporting features for set-top boxes, DVD audio, and DVD security. With DVI and HDMI outputs and a serial ATA HDD interface. Manufactured in ST's 90nm fab process technology and based around a 300 MHz ST40 SuperH architecture 32-bit RISC host CPU. Available at $29 in high volume (early 2005). Customers:
  • an unnamed "leading Japanese broadband provider" for a set-top box
  • more than one "international telco operator" for IP set-top boxes
  
  7109 chip, similar to the STB7100 but with enhanced security featuyres for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players/recorders. Available at $26 in high volume (late 2005).
  Nomadik ARM-based multimedia processors for mobile devices are certified by Microsoft for Windows CE 5.0.
  • STn8800 Nomadik processor including an ARM 926EJ processor along with audio and video accelerators
  • STn8810 with higher processor clock speed, data security features, and added power management features
  • STn8811 with the STn8810 features, plus 512 megabits of NAND flash and 256 megabits of SDRAM as stacked die within the same package
  • STn8812 with the features of the STn8811, but 512 megabits of SDRAM
  Nomadik chips can achieve 30 frame per second VGA resolution MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264 (AVC) video encode or decode. It is unclear who provides such software.
  • Nomadik chips are used in Nokia devices
  
  STI5518 STB chip with a ST20 core, a programmable MMDSP 32-bit processor for 24-bit audio, and a hardwired MPEG-2 decoder. Has sold more than 250M units.
  STV0370
  STD2000 HDTV processor chip. Decodes 2 simultaneous analog or digital SDTV signals or two HDTV digital decodes. Has multipath interference reduction features. Enhances and displays video on CRT or flat-panel TVs. Includes ST proprietary deinterlacing and 3D motion adaptive noise reduction. Manufacutred in 90nm CMOS.
  DTV100 dual-channel digital TV reference based on the STD2000. Audio is processed with a STV82x7/8 DSP.
• Internal processor cores (not available outside of ST):
  ST20
  ST200 VLIW media processors capable of being programmed for MPEG-2, H.264, etc.
  ST231 capable of standard definition video (presumably decoding H.264 Main Profile) and audio.
  ST40 (SuperH SH4 equivalent) can run Windows CE and other operating systems
• The processor core licensing company, SuperH is a joint venture of ST and Hitachi.
• Partners:
  • ST has partnered with OpenTV and Silicon & Software Systems to develop set-top box (STB) reference designs.
  • ST has partnered with E-World Technology Co. of China to develop chips for H.264-based Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) players.
• Acquisitions:
  • Santa Clara, CA based flat panel display controller chip company, Arithmos, in 1999 for $43M.

• Matrox
• Silicon Spectrum
• S3 Graphics
• Lucid Logix
  • Location: Herzlyia
  • $4M series A financing in 2005
  • developing a 3D graphics chip set with a parallel processing architecture

• Pixelworks
  • Location: Tualatin, OR
  • Nasdaq: PXLW
  • Founded: 1997
  • about 350 employees, about 1/3 in China
  • Products:
    PW1220 (formerly nDSP NV221)
    BSP-15 88mm2 chip runs at 400 MHz and consumes 3W
    PWBSP-16 (formerly Equator BSP-16) fully software programmable with good software development tool support and per-chip prices for consumer digital video devices. Pixelworks marketing appears to be especially focused on IPTV with this chip. WMV9 at high definition resolution, VC-1, MPEG-2 at high definition resolution, MPEG-4, H.264 (AVC) Baseline and Main profiles at standard definition resolution, Real Video, and H.263 are supported. Programmability is beneficial because other simpler high-performance video codecs with lower royalties, such as VP7, can be implemented on the PWBSP-16. The PWBSP-16 runs at 500 MHz with 8 GMACs, consumes 1.7 watts, and is 60 mm2 with DDR SDRAM and NAND flash interfaces. The chip sells for $20 in volume.
    The PWBSP-17, expected in late 2006, will support H.264 at HDTV resolution
    The PWBSP-18, expected in the distant future, will support multiple SDTV and HDTV streams
  • Customers:
    • Sichuan Changhong uses the PS12x0 chip for deinterlacing in progressive scan CRT televisions.
    • TCL uses the PS12x0 chip for deinterlacing in progressive scan CRT televisions.
    • Hisense uses the PS12x0 chip for deinterlacing in progressive scan CRT televisions.
    • Skyworth uses the PS12x0 chip for deinterlacing in progressive scan CRT televisions.
  • Vendors:
    • Pixelworks' Pearl image processor chip uses a Silicon Image HDMI receiver IP core.
  • Target Markets:
    • video SoCs with embedded DRAM
  • Acquisitions:
    • RISC-VLIW multi-CPU core video processor chip manufacturer with 75 people, Equator, for $109M in 2005
    • Frame rate conversion, deinterlacing, noise reduction, motion compensation, and resolution enhancement chip vendor, nDSP, for about $15M in stock, in 2001
    • Panstera 2000
• DiBcom
  • Location: Palaiseau, France
  • Founded: 2000
  • DVB-H and DVB-T receiver chipsets
  • Products:
    STK3000-P small DVB-T receiver
    DIB7000-H is a DVB-H receiver chip, fabbed in 0.13um technology and consuming less than 20mW.
    DIB7070-H is a DVB-H receiver chip with integrated tuner and demodulator, fabbed in UMC 0.13um technology and consumes about 40mW. The chip supports L-band, VHF, and UHF reception. The chip is priced at $10 in high quantities.
    DIB3000-M, for fixed and portable reception of DVB-T signals, performs coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) demodulator does demodulation of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Fabbed in .18um technology.
    DIB3000-P is a low cost implementation of the DIB3000-M with reduced Doppler compensation, making it better for digital TV and PC applications rather than applications likely to be used in automobiles. Fabbed in .18um technology.
    DIB7700-P DVB-T chip with a USB 2.0 interface for pen-sized receiver devices as PC peripherals.
    DIB7710-P DVB-T chip with a PCI interface for PC peripherals.
  • Partners:
    • Intel has invested an undisclosed sum of money in DiBcom, apparently with an interest in the DVB-H market. UMC is also a strategic investor in DiBcom.
    • with Cypress for building USB 2.0 video products
  • Customers:
    • A Siemens mobile phone plays DVB-H video broadcasts using a DiBcom chipset
• Focus Enhancements
  • NASDAQ:FCSE
  • Videonics
• BenQ (formerly Acer)
• Chrontel
  • Founded: 1986
  • video connector interface driver chip vendor
  • Products:
    • CH7023 NTSC / PAL encoder chip for PDAs, portable media players, and handsets
    • CH7301A DVI transmitter
  • Customers:
    • BenQ (formerly Acer)
    • Dell
    • Fujitsu
    • Hewlett-Packard
    • NEC
    • Sony
    • Toshiba
  • Acquisitions:
    • Wireless Interface Technologies
• AverLogic
• Silicon Motion
  • Location: Jhubei City (near Hsinchu), Taiwan
  • Founded: 1995
  • $115M IPO in 2005
  • Primarily sells display controller chips, including some low-power ones for mobile multimedia, and including some with MPEG-2 motion compensation for DVD playing devices. Silicon Motion also makes Flash memory controller chips.
• Techwell
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Founded: 1997
  • more than 70 employees
  • Products:
    TW9900 family of NTSC/PAL analog video decoder chips
    TW2800 family of security/surveillance analog video decoder chips
    TW8800 family of LCD display controller chips
    
  • Investors:
    • Genesis Microchip invested $1.1M in Techwell in 1999
• Vativ Technologies
  • Location: San Diego, CA
  • Products:
    VTV2320 HDMI receiver chip with 3 inputs and 2 display outputs.
    VTV1110 10GbE UTP Transciever
    VXP-10-010A1; 10GbE XENPAK module
    VTV3xx0; DS3 LIU
    

Broadcom

• Nasdaq: BRCM
• Products:
  BCM3563 dual channel 1080p60 DTV decoder chip with picture-in-picutre and picture-by-picture fabbed in 65nm technology with LVDS transmitters to LCD displays with motion adaptive deinterlacing, 3D comb filter, PC input, dual component input, S-video input, and RGB input, multiple audio format support. Pricing is not published. BCM7400 AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 video decoder chip with security features for cable, satellite, and IPTV receivers. Based on a proprietary multi-threaded MIPS ISA CPU with audio processing and a 2D/3D graphics engine. Priced at $49.50.
  BCM7401 AVC Main and High Profile level 4.1, VC-1 Simple, Main, and Advanced Profile at level 3, and MPEG-2 HDTV chip for embedded hard disk drive DVR and home gateway applications including a MIPS32 CPU and a 64 bit 200 MHz DDR SDRAM interface. Priced at $30.
  BCM7402 AVC / VC-1 chip for non-DVR or networked DVR client applications including a MIPS32 CPU. Priced at $27.
  BCM7411D HD A/V decoder chip meant for Blu-Ray DVD players and supporting H.264 (AVC) High Profile at Level 4.1, VC-1 Advanced Profile at Level 3, and MPEG-2 Main Profile at High Level. The chip also decodes Blu-Ray standard audio and includes Thomson "Filme Grain Technology". Priced at $25.
  BCM97438 BCM7411D chip based reference design, available only to qualified OEMs.
  BCM2133 WCDMA/EDGE 3G mobile phone chip based on an ARM926EJ processor with a 2 megapixel digital camera interface, video record and playback capability, and a TV output.
  BCM2722 VideoCore II Multimedia Processor, used in the Apple Video iPod, is capable of MPEG-4 video encode and decode at up to VGA resolution at 30 fps (9.2 megapixels per second) or H.264 encode and decode at up to CIF resolution with design for low power consumption for battery powered devices. The package contains a stacked 32 megabit SDRAM, a USB 1.1 slave interface, a camera interface for up to 5 megapixels, and an LCD controller interface among other interfaces. The BCM2722 is manufactured in a 0.13um CMOS process technology.
  BCM2124, the same as the BCM2122, but with 64 megabits of stacked SDRAM.
  BCM2702, the same as the BCM2122, but with no SDRAM.
  BCM7038 dual-channel HDTV and digital video recorder (DVR) and BCM7411 AVC video decoder/audio processor chip. Used by:
  • EchoStar
  • LG Electronics
  • Pace in the DS810 HDTV set-top box
  • Thomson
  • Samsung
  • France Telecom
• an AVS decoder chip is planned
• Acquisitions:
  • Alphamosaic (Cambridge, UK), 2004, $120M stock & $2.7M cash. With its production VC01 co-processor chip and sampling VC02 chip, Alphamosaic specialized in low power devices for cell phones and other battery operated devices. Alphamosaic had an SDK along with ports of MPEG-4, MPEG-2, and motion JPEG codecs. Alphamosaic's chips are based on a single 32-bit RISC processor with 16 8/16-bit vector units, and a 64x64 2-D register file. The VC01 ran at up to 125 MHz. Alphamosaic had partnership with ARC, ARM, Mentor Graphics/Accelerated Technologies, and others.
  • H.264 chip developer Sand Video (Andover, MA), 2004, $70.1M stock & $7.4M cash
  • MPEG-2 video/audio compression/decompression chip maker VisionTech targeting PVR and video conferencing applications with Motorola/General Instruments, Scientific Atlanta, Pace, WebTv, and ReplayTV as customers, 2000 $777M stock
  • Broadcom acquired mobile digital TV tuner chip company, Athena, in 2005 for $22M cash.
  • Broadcom acquired DVI chip maker Pivotal Technologies in 2000.
  • Broadcom acquired 3D graphics chip company Stellar Semiconductor in 2000.
  • Broadcom acquired digital video decoder chip company Armedia in 1999.
• Lawsuit filed in 2005 pending against Qualcomm alleging infringement of multiple patents on communications and multimedia related inventions

• Fresco Microchip
  • Location: Toronto, Canada
  • $14.7M first VC funding in 2005
  • Making a R/F signal demodulation chip to extract video bitstreams from received digital broadcasts.
• C2 Microsystems
  • most engineering in Beijing, most sales in Taipei, management in Silicon Valley
  • founded by ex-C-Cube, ex-Chromatic Research engineer Stephen (Steve) Purcell
  • chips for portable media players and recorders and IPTV STBs
  • Products:
    • CC1100 SDTV based on a 220 MHz (MIPS?) superscalar RISC SIMD CPU with media coprocessors supporting MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, WM9, and audio formats with motion aware deinterlacing, scaling, noise filtering, and 2D graphics overlays, fabbed in 0.15 micron technology
    • CC1000 (available soon) HDTV supporting MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, WM9, and audio formats with motion aware deinterlacing, scaling, noise filtering, and 2D graphics overlays

• Quartics
  • Location: Irvine, CA
  • Target Markets:
    • chips for video billboards and signs
    • chips for wireless home video transmissions
  • Products:
    • QV1303 decoder for PC graphics on high resolution display over USB
    • QV1401 remote PC processor for lossless PC graphics on high resolution displays over IP networks
    • QV1501 remote PC processor for compressed PC graphics and audio on high resolution displays over IP networks
• Vweb
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Founded: 1998
  • Products:
    • VW2010 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.263 encoder/decoder/transcoder. Supports up to D1 resolution interlaced video.
    • VW2005 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.263 encoder. Supports up to D1 resolution interlaced video.
    • VW2002 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.263 decoder. Supports up to D1 resolution interlaced video.
    • VW3010 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.263 encoder/decoder/transcoder. Supports up to D1 resolution. Pin-compatible with older VW2010 chip.
    • VW4012 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264 encoder/decoder/transcoder. Supports up to D1 resolution.
    • VW4010 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, and VC-1 encoder/decoder/transcoder. Supports up to D1 resolution and interlaced and progressive video.
    • VW6010 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, and VC-1 encoder/decoder/transcoder. Supports up to HDTV resolution and interlaced and progressive video.
  • Partners:
    • Toshiba has created STB reference designs with a Toshiba MIPS chips and Vweb VW2010 chip.
      • Espial has ported IPTV software and web browser to the reference design.
      • TVblob has developed video conference application software for the reference design.
      • SkipJam has developed digital home application software for the reference design.
      The reference design is used in the Sumitomo Networks IP set-top box for NTT VOD networks in Japan. Toshiba is working on future reference designs with Vweb VW3010 and VW4012 chips and a Toshiba TX4939 CPU chip.
    • Intel has created a home gateway reference design using a VW2005 encoder and Xscale and IA processors. Syabas and Oregan Networks have ported software to the reference design.
    • IBM has created an IP-STB reference design with a PowerPC chip and a Vweb VW2010. The reference design also supports DVB-C and is used by CNC for VoD services in Hangzhou, China.
    • Taifatech, using software from NewSoft, has developed a wireless AV capture device for WiFi-TV on PCs using a Vweb chip to capture MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.
    • Sigma Designs
  • Vendors:
    • Synopsys chip design tools
• VisionFlow
  • Location: Austin, TX
  • Founded: 2003
  • significant operations in China
  • has proprietary H.264 encode/decode also VC-1, MPEG-4/2
  • also has AAC, AC3, MP3 audio
• Vixs
  • Location: Toronto, Canada
  • HDTV video over Wi-Fi
    • transrating
    • scaling
  • Products:
    • Matrix-II
    • XCode
    • XCode-II
  • Customers:
    • NVidia uses Vixs in a DualTV MCE tuner card
    • Profilo in Europe uses Matrix-II chips in a 42-inch plasma TV
    • Sigmacom in Korea uses Matrix-II chips in TV sets
    • Funai in Japan uses Matrix-II chips in TV sets
    • Sony uses XCode in its LF-PK1 PVR in Japan
    • I-O Data uses XCode-II in TV tuner cards
    • Sony Electronics uses XCode-II in Vaio desktop PCs and media servers
    • Ulead uses XCode-II in multimedia PCs
  • Vendors:
    • Vixs has licensed MIPS Technologies IP cores
• Xilient
  • stealth mode
• GemTech Systems
  • Location: Kerala, India
  • Advised by Krishna Yarlagadda
  • Products based on proprietary MxP platform.
  • web site has disappeared
• AD Holdings / AD Group holding company
  • Location: Warrington, UK
  • Subsidiaries:
    • AD Aerospace
    • AD Aviation
    • AD Network Video
    • Dedicated Micros
      • Location: Manchester, UK
      • Products: Digital recording systems/boxes/servers for small, medium, and large businesses and vehicles for security and monitoring purposes.
    • Dennard
    • D Tec
    • RemGuard Visual Management
    • TSS
    • Chipwrights
      • Location: Waltham, MA
      • Acquired by AD Group May, 2005
      • Sells low-power, low-cost programmable digital signal processor chips based on their proprietary CWvX processor architecture
        • CW4011 for basic digital still camera products
        • CW4512 supporting smaller, lower-cost, higher-performance digital still cameras by integrating more peripherals on a chip with higher processor performance
        • CW5521 good for digital motion video cameras with even video peripherals integrated on chip and more processor performance.
• Neotion
  • Location: France
  • founded 2000
  • In the market of CI slot plugin video decoder devices
  • Products:
    NP4 H.264 (AVC) decoder and H.264 (AVC) to MPEG-2 transcoder with TCP/IP functionality
  • Acquisitions:
    • Neotion acquired H.264 (AVC) ASIC company Xeole in 2004
  • Customers:
    • Neotion receivers are used for H.264 (AVC) reception of Island Media IPTV broadcasts of Race Track Network horse and dog races.
    • Nedersat uses Neotion chips in its pan-European satellite receiver systems
• Entropic Communications
• General Atomics division of General Dynamics
  • Location: San Diego, CA
  • NYSE: GD
  • Products:
    Aspen sends streaming video over ultra-wideband (UWB) radios at up to 80 Mbps for low error-rate transmission over up to 15 meters. Aspen is implemented as a multi-chip module, with the RF front end manufactured in IBM's SiGe technology and the MAC and baseband processor fabbed in a .18um process at Korean foundry DongbuAnam Semiconductor.
  • Acquisitions:
    • RF Magic
      • Location: San Diego, CA
      • Products:
        RF4000 DVB-T tuner. Made with Silicon Germanium (SiGe) foundry partner Jazz Semiconductor. Priced under $5.
        RF4400 ATSC tuner. Release 2005 Q4.
        STB6000 QPSK DVB/DSS direct conversion tuner. Co-developed with ST Microelectronics.
        STB6100 DVB-S2 direct conversion satellite tuner
• Radiospire Networks
  • Location: Concord, MA
  • Radiospire makes a chipset that transmits and receives HDMI video/audio data over a secure UWB 802.15.3a or 802.11n wireless network connection for up to 15 feet. The chip supports 720p and 1080i resolution video and transmits without compression. Chipset has transceiver chip and a baseband processor chip. A chip supporting 1080p will be available in 2H06.

• Micronas
  • Location: Germany
  • SWX: MASN
  • Products:
    DRX-H family of 8VSB/QAM/QPSK/NTSC demodulators for ATSC compliant DTV sets, STBs, multimedia PCs, DVD recorders, and PVRs. Based on Micronas' primeD multipath addition technology for improved reception quality.
    APB 7202A nGene PCI Express dual-channel audio/video multimedia controller chip with transport stream capture capability.
    DRX3976D DVB-T COFDM demodulator with diversity reception mode for mobile applications
    DRX3973D, DRX3975D, DRX3977D, COFDM demodulators
    DRX3942H digital terrestrial ATSC and digital cable-ready qam receiver
    MDE9517D / MDE9518D MPEG-2 transport stream, video, & audio decoders for DVB set-top boxes and IDTV sets
    SDA55xx 2D graphics chip containing a microcontroller for television displays
    PVP9390A picture-in-picture chip for 50, 60, and 100 Hz scanning displays
    VGC5969B dual-channel video graphics controller for 1080p flat-panel TVs, including 3D comb filter, VBI slicer, motion adaptive de-interlacing, scaling, and pixel graphics support with 10-bit signal processing. Has Micronas truD deinterlacing.
    VPC323xD comb filter video processor for up to 120 Hz frame rates and 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios with PiP support.
    VSP94x7B color decoder and scan rate converter
    DPS9455B display processor, scaler, and de-interlacer for PC and HDTV resolution display on flat-panel display (FPD) TV sets including liquid crystal display (LCD) and Plasma display panel (PDP) display technologies.
    FRC942xA deinterlacer, frame rate converter, with motion estimation and motion compensation. Has Micronas truD deinterlacing.
    VCT6wxyP flat panel CRT-TV display controller with HDTV support
    VSP94x7B color decoder and scan rate converter for 100i or 60p TV sets
    VCT48xyI / VCT49xyI television front-end
    MicStickD USB 2.0 DVB-T COFDM receiver and video decoder reference design with a Microtune MT2060 tuner, a Micronas DRX3975D demodulator and a Cypress FX2LP USB controller chip. The system is compliant with the Microsoft Driver Architecture (BDA) standard. Complete with design files and driver software. Priced at $20 each at high quantities.
    MicViper PCI Express dual-channel PC-TV reference design for ATSC DTV reception using the Micronas nGene dual-channel multimedia controller chip and DRX-H ATSC channel demodulator.
    MicPython 2H-X two tuner DVB-T PCI Express card supporting HDTV resolution for Windows XP Media Center devices.
    
  • Acquisitions:
    • WISchip International (formerly WIS Technologies)
      • Location: Santa Clara, CA
      • Founded: 1998
      • acquired by Micronas in 2005 for $80M (plus ~$20M in retention payments to top management)
      • approximately 78 engineers, 32 of whom work in a Shanghai R&D office
      • Focused primarily on encoder technology
      • with a Shanghai office
      • Products:
        DeCypher 8100 multi-stream, high-definition decoder for H.264, VC-1, MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-2, and MPEG-1 with DRM, audio, and networking support. Designed for IP STBs, HD TV sets, and HD-DVD / Blu-Ray DVD systems. Fabbed in a UMC 0.13 um technology.
        7007SB encoder chip for MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, motion JPEG (MJPEG), H.263, and DivX encodes at D1 resolution and frame rate (10.4M pixels per second(. Uses 32-bit wide PC100 SDRAM.
        Cypher 7108 "real time streaming media" encoder chip offers support for the same coding standards and resolution as the 7007SB, but with an integrated 166 MHz 32-bit MIPS Technologies CPU core.
      • Customers:
        • The WISchip GO7007SB is used for encoding MPEG 1, 2, 4 and DivX in the Plextor ConvertXT PVR for Windows and Macintosh computers.
      • Partners:
        • Wischip's DeCypher 8100 chip is supported by the Microsoft TV IPTV software.
    • TV broadcast receiver chip company LINX Electronics (Palatine, IL) 2004, $26M cash and stock
    • The digital television chip group (in Nijmegen, Holland) of Microtune (Plano, TX) 2003. The group came from the company SPaSE, which had been acquired by Microtune in 2001. The group had IDCT, FFT, MPEG2 stream demux, and other related technologies.
    • The consumer image and video IC group of Infineon (Munich, Germany) in 2000, $200M
  • Partners:
    • The Micronas MicViper reference design uses an Xceive XC3028 tuner chip.
    • Digital 5 has applied its network attached storage (NAS) software to the Micronas/WISchip Cypher 7108 PVR reference design to create a digital media server reference design.
    • GreenChips distributes Micronas chips in Korea.
    • Logiway's Magello DTV middleware has been ported to the Micronas 95xyD chips for PVR and other STB applications.
• NXP Semiconductors
  • Formerly Philips Semiconductor, was spun out as an independent multi-national corporation in 2006.
  • TriMedia is a NXP internal microprocessor core with a proprietary architecture. It is a VLIW with an instruction set optimized for digital media processing. One implementation is the NXP-internal TM3270 synthesizable RTL core.
  • Nexperia is a product line of chips based on a Trimedia processor with specific-application targeted peripherals. Nexperia chips have part numbers beginning with PNX
  • Products:
    Nexperia PNX4103 software programmable mobile multimedia processor, capable of H.264 (unspecified Profile) decode at D1 (SDTV) resolution with stacked DRAM and support for direct and RAM-buffered display interfaces.
    BGT210, BGT211, BGT215 DVB-H front-end system-in-package module for mobile phones including a TDA10105 demodulator and a TDA18281/2 tuner. Designed for mobile phones.
    Nexperia PNX5000 scaler and de-interlacer for LCD TVs up to 1366 x 768 resolution (not including 1920x1280 1080i HDTV resolution)
    PNX7100 DVD recorder chip with MPEG-2 encoding and decoding for interlaced video includes a MIPS Technologies 133 MHz MIPS32 system controller processor core.
    PNX7200 DVD recorder chip with similar features to the PNX7100 but additional support for progressive scan video, fabbed in a NXP 0.12 um process.
    PNX7850 DVD recorder chip supporting all of the major DVD and CD recording formats (DVD+R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW) for PC based recorders
    PNX831x cable set-top box decoder chip including a 120 MHz MIPS processor and support for all major MPEG-2 based DVB standards
    Nexperia PNX8550 analog/digital television chip including a 266 MHz MIPS CPU processor core and a 240 MHz TriMedia processor core supporting demux and decoding of SDTV MPEG-2 Main profile and Main level and HDTV MPEG-2 Main profile and High level, with scaling and de-interlacing up to 1920x1080 resolution at 60 interlaced fields/second or 1368x720 resolution at 60 progressive scan frames per second.
    PNX8526 advanced set-top box and digital television chip including the resolution and frame rate capabilities of the PNX8550 as well as additional features.
    PNX855x "home entertainment engine"
    PNX010x portable audio and multimedia player chip based on ARM7 or ARM9 processors with a NAND flash memory and hard drive interfaces
    Nexperia PNX1300 media processor based on the TriMedia VLIW processor core running at 200 MHz.
    Nexperia PNX1500 media processor based on the TriMedia TM2360 VLIW processor core running at 300 MHz with an LCD display controller and ethernet interface. Used in the Philips'/NXP STB22x reference design / platform offerings.
    Nexperia PNX1700 with features similar to the PNX1500 but based on the TriMedia TM5250 CPU core with software support for H.264, MPEG-4 (SP, MVP, ASP), WMV9, DivX, and MPEG-2 with support for HDTV resolution decode of MPEG-2, WMV9, and DivX (but not H.264).
    TV810 DVB STB chip
    STB810 IP and broadcast STB chip based on the Nexperia PNX855x processor
    ISP1585 USB system controller for real-time streaming video, streams DV or any MPEG-2 transport stream (including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and other elementary video streams) to/from digital video camera, digital still cameras, webcams, and TV tuners.
    TDA989x demodulator for analog and digital TV
    STB22x reference design / platform based on the Nexperia PNX1500 chip, available in June 2006 supporting deocde of HDTV resolution H.264 and WMV9 video (what profiles? support for the full H.264 standard?)
    TV810 reference design / platform based on the Nexperia PNX1500 chip, implementing features for analog and digital TV sets with LCD, plasma, DLP, or LCOS displays. Priced at $63, available in 2006.
    PNX5050 chip for implementing motion compensated de-interlacing with judder cancellation. Priced at $20, available in 2006.
    TV520 reference design for low cost LCD TVs supporting ATSC & DVB analog and digital TV standards.
    
  • Customers:
    • 15 to 26 inch LCD TVs from Chinese consumer electronics vendor, Skyworth, use the Phlips TDA15500 chip and TV505 reference design.
  • Vendors:
    • NXP is a licensee of the MIPS Technologies 4KE IP core for use in set-top boxes and PC TV tuners.

• Sunplus
• Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
• Target Markets:
  • DVD Players
  • digital still cameras
• Products:
  • SPHE6500 DVD chip
  • SPV7030 LCD/CRT display controller chip
• Customers:
  • Mustek DV4000 hand-help digital video and still camera uses the Sunplus TCatch image processor chip for interpolating pixels to increase resolution.
• Vendors:
  • The SPHE6500 DVD chip includes a Silicon Image HDMI transmitter IP core. The Sunplus SPV7030 LCD/CRT display controller chip includes a Silicon Image HDMI receiver IP core.
• Magicpixel
  • Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
  • spun off from Macronix in 2002
  • Makes digital still camera and flat panel display controller chips
• Winbond
  • Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
  • ticker: WBEMF
  • Big in PC camera, imaging, and communications chips.
• VIA Technologies
• Novatek
• VXIS
  • Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
  • Investors:
    • x86 PC chipset maker SiS (Taiwan)
• Macronix (aka MXIC)
  • Location: Hsinchu, Taiwan
  • Founded: 1989
  • Products:
    MX88V610 digital still camera controller IC containing a certain powerful 32-bit RISC CPU used in Minolta DiMAGE cameras.
    MX88Lxxx series of flat panel display controller chips. Including some products with motion adaptive de-interlacing.
  • MagicPixel is a spin-off of Macronix focusing on digital still camera and flat panel display controller chips.
  • Subsidiaries:
    • Biomorphic Microsystems
      • Biomorphic's CMOS image sensor silicon is manufactured by Israeli foundry Tower Semiconductor in a 0.18um process technology.
      • Products:
        Bi8910 1280x1024 resolution, 1/3" optical format, 3.6 µm pixel size, with YCbCr, YUV, RGB565 outputs with built in image processor. Priced at $3.50 in volume.
        Bi8920 1600x1200 resolution, 1/2.7" optical format, 3.6 µm pixel size, with YCbCr, YUV, RGB565 outputs with built in image processor.
        Bi8921 1600x1200 resolution, 1/2.7" optical format, 3.6 µm pixel size, with JPEG, YCbCr, YUV, RGB535 outputs with built in image processor. Priced at $6 in volume.
        Bi8931 2048x1536 resolution, 1/2" optical format, 3.2 µm pixel size, with JPEG, YCbCr, YUV, RGB535 outputs with built in image processor.
        Bi8892 1600x1200 resolution, 1/2.7" optical format, 3.6 µm pixel size, with 10-bit Bayer, RGB outputs.
        Bi8831S 1280x1024 resolution, 1/3" optical format, 4.0 µm sq. pixel size, with separate Bi6831S companion controller chip.
        Bi8891 1600x1200 resolution, 1/2" optical format, 4.0 µm sq. pixel size, with separate Bi6831S companion controller chip.
        Biomorphic Microsystems also sells complete images sensor modules

• BLX IC Design Corp.
  • Location: Beijing, China
  • Products:
    Godson-2 32-bit MIPS ISA (no ISA license from MIPS Technologies, Inc.) chip that runs at 300 to 500 MHz, implemented in a .18um process. Used by Chinese developers of AVS products.
• Celestial Semiconductor
  • Location: Beijing, China
  • Celestial Semi has recently removed almost all information from their web site.
  • Products:
    AVS101 decoder chip for the AVS standard. Development funded by China's national high-tech R&D initiative known as the 863 program.
  • Vendors:
    • Celestial licensed an ARM 926EJ-S core in April 2005
    • Celestial licensed the ZSP400 DSP processor core from LSI Logic
    • Celestial is a licensee of Sci-Worx.
  • has an office in Santa Clara
• OmniDesign
  • Location: Beijing, China
  • Founded: 2003
  • The OmniDesign web site has gone down. I am curious to know what happened to the company.
  • Products:
    S-series for set top boxes supports MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9, and AVS multi-channel decode at HDTV resolution with support for up to 16-channels simultaneous decode at SDTV resolution and simultaneous encode and decode at SDTV resolution
    T-series for digital television supports MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9, and AVS multi-channel decode at HDTV resolution with support for up to 16-channels simultaneous decode at SDTV resolution
    D-series for video disk players and recorders supports MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9, and AVS multi-channel decode at HDTV resolution with support for up multiple channels simultaneous decode at SDTV resolution
    M-series for mobile devices supports MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9, and AVS-W decode or encode with support for JPEG still image capture
    B-series for industrial video equipment
    P-series for professional and studio content production
  • First actual tape-out was planned for July 2005
  • Chips are reported to make an efficient balance between hardwired efficiency and software programmability in order to minimize die area and power consumption while still achieving multi-format support.
  • Customers:
    • An unnamed US satellite STB maker
• Huaya Microelectronics
  • Location: Shanghai, China
  • founded 2001
  • Products:
    Television SoC
    Portable TV chips
    PC TV / Video set-top box chips
  • Vendors:
    • Huaya Microelectronics is a licensee of the 4Kc CPU core from MIPS Technologies
  • Membership:
    • Huaya Microelectronics is a member of the AVS Audio / Video coding standard workgroup
• Vimicro
  • Location: Beijing, China
  • Founded: 1999
  • soon to be listed on Nasdaq
  • Products:
    VC0201 USB 1.1 CIF PC camera controller
    VC0301 USB 1.1 VGA PC camera controller
    VC0301 Plus USB 1.1 VGA PC camera controller (enhanced version)
    VC0302 USB 1.1 VGA PC camera controller (with audio function)
    VC0321 USB 2.0 PC camera controller
    VC0501 digital still camera controller (CMOS & CCD)
    VC0511 external mobile phone camera controller, digital still camera controller, USB flash memory camera controller
    VC0558 embedded mobile phone camera controller
    VC0568 embedded mega pixel mobile phone camera controller VC0810 (also called x-Cube) ARM-9 based chip with a hardwired MPEG-4 decoder core capable of QVGA at 30 fps and supporting a range of popular audio coding standards (presumably decoded by the ARM core). VC0858 (also called mini-Cube) same as VC0810 but with FM radio receiver and 1.3 megapixel image sensor inputs. VC0812 (also called magic-Cube) same as VC0810 but with an 8-bit game emulator and 2-D graphics accelerator and support for a 2 megapixel image sensor.
  • chips supporting multilevel flash, USB 2.0 OTG, and Microsoft DRM expected in mid-2007
  • the VXP-I chip was fabbed at TSMC
  • Customers:
    • Vimicro's VXP video communication system was deployed at the SARS treatment facility of XiaoTangShan Hospital
    • Vimicro's VXP IV MMS chip is used by Sprint PCS as part of its PCS Vision mobile imaging solution.
    • The Vimicro VXP-III processor is used by Fujitsu for Robot vision applications in "Maron-1".
    • Samsung uses the VXP-I chip
    • Philips uses the VXP-I chip
  • Partners:
    • Vimicro has a partnership with Microsoft for worldwide promotion of its VXP imaging technology.
  • Competitors:
    • Vimicro competes with Actions Semiconductor in portable media players.
  • Memberships:
    • member of the mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) alliance
• Actions Semiconductor
  • Location: Zhuhai, Guangdong, China
  • Nasdaq: ACTS
  • Founded: 2001
  • 257 employees
  • portable media player chip maker
• Grandview Semiconductor
  • The web site for Grandview Semiconductor is unavailable. Any information would be appreciated.
  • a supporter and implementer of the AVS video coding standard
  • Products:
    • HJ001 IPTV set-top box chip. Decodes AVS 1.0 at Level 6.2 at 1080i and 720p resolution. Fabbed in 0.18um CMOS. With HDMI and analog composite and component video outputs. Based on a 200 MHz 32-bit RISC CPU with 8k + 8k caches.
• Penstar aka Shanghai Longjing Microelectronics Company
  • a supporter and implementer of the AVS video coding standard

Zoran

• Location: Sunnyvale, CA
• Zoran is one of the world's most prominent leading video chip vendors with a broad range of chips serving many markets. Why do they license IP cores? Who does Zoran license IP cores to? Their competitors?
• Products:
  Scaler-1 up/down scaler with edge detection and interpolation for upscaling and anti-aliasing for downscaling, consuming ~170k gates.
  HDM-T1 HDMI transmitter
  HDM-R1 HDMI receiver
  PEP-1 picture enhancement processor for brightness and dynamic range adjustment and adaptive processing based on input video characteristics.
  Frame-It-1 deinterlacer with detection and appropriate treatment of still and moving areas of the frame/field and with support for 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown
  NRED-1 motion-adaptive noise reduction processor
  NTSC/PAL/SECAM video encoders and decoders (decoders with 2D and 3D comb filters) for a range of video resolutions
  Vaddis 966, Vaddis 9 series DVD player chip with support for DivX, MP3 CD playing, and photo CD display. Designed for home and portable DVD players with improved scratch tolerance over previous Vaddis series chip.
  Vaddis 882, DivX Ultra certified
  SupraHD 660 DTV processor including MPEG-2 and NTSC video decoders, HDMI receiver, video processing engine to control LCD and other high definition displays.
  SupraHD 640 DTV digital tuner and MPEG-2 decoder for CRT televisions.
  SupraTV television processor chip includes a MIPS32 CPU, multi-stream transport demultiplexer, audio DSP, MPEG video decoder, a 2D graphics engine, and a digital video encoder supporting single and dual tuner digital video recording.
  Activa 200 DVD player/recorder SOC including read/write channel, servo, data processor, and CPU. Meant for use with Activa 250 analog companion chip. The chipset is priced at $25.
  Activa 100/150 DVD player/recorder SOC chip set including read/write channel, servo, data processor, hard drive interface, and CPU. Records HDTV ATSC content when used with a SupraHD chip or SDTV DVB content when used with a SupraTV chip.
  Cascade2 ATSC DTV demodulator. Manufactured in a 0.18um process technology by Tower Semiconductor.
  Zmedia chip encodes 680x480 resolution video (at unspecified frame rate) into an MPEG-4 (unspecified profile) bitstream. Used in:
  • Advanced Technology Office (ATO) portable media player dock for iPods
  
  Approach mobile phone chip with camera image signal processing for up to 5 megapixels with 640x480 resolution 30 fps MPEG-4 capture and playback and mobile DTV and H.264 decoding with TV output. Manufactured in a 90nm technology and sold in a 10x10 mm package with a SDRAM chip in the same package.
• Customers:
  • Acer Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) terrestrial LCD TVs uses the Zoran SupraTV processor chip.
• Acquisitions:
  • digital television chip vendor Oren Semiconductor 2005 $44.6M
  • Emblaze Ltd., a chip maker the sold MPEG-4 audio/video encoder/decoder chips for low power wireless applications, 2004 $54.2M cash
  • Oak Technologies, 2003 $358M total including $100M cash
    • Acquisitions:
      • video decoder chip company TeraLogic with Sony, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Thomson/RCA, ReplayTV, and Toshiba as customers 2002 $38M
• Vendors:
  • A Zoran multimedia application processor chip for mobile phones based on the technology acquired from Emblaze includes a Falanx Mali100T 3D graphics IP core.
• Partners:
  • Zoran runs a joint product development lab in Xiamen, China with with Xiamen Overseas Chinese Electronic Corp. Ltd (Xoceco)
  • Zoran has partnered with Thomson Tuner Group to create digital to analog reference designs to enable CRT televisions and set-top boxes to display ATSC A-74 DTV signals. The solution uses the Zoran SupraHD640 DTV processor and Cascade 2 demodulator with a Thomson ATSC tuner.
• Lawsuit filed against Mediatek in 2004 asserting patent infringement, settled in 2006 with Mediatek paying $55M to Zoran and an agreement to pay future royalties, possibly up to $30M.

LSI Logic

• Location: Milpitas, CA
• LSI Logic sells a wide variety of standard product chips, ASICs, "platform" ASICs, foundry manufacturing and design services, and semiconductor IP cores.
• Video and communications standard products include:
  ZiVA chip for DVD / VCD players based on a 150 MHz SPARC processor with DSP extensions and accelerators and peripherals, including a field-adaptive de-interlacer
  SC2005 chip for set-top boxes supporting conditional access and hard-disk recording, based on a 108 MHz TinyRISC MIPS instruction-set CPU with a 5-plane graphics engine, multi-standard encoders, and DACs
  DoMiNo (DMN) series chips based on dual SPARC processors for DVD/DVR/PVR player/recorder products with, at the high end, NTSC/PAL TV encoding, digital video encoder/decoders for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DV-25, and ATAPI drive controllers including:
  DMN-8653 single-chip HDD/DVD recorder processor supporting one decode and two encodes simultaneously in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DivX format, presumably at standard NTSC/PAL television resolution priced at $25 in volume quantities (July 2005)
  DMN-8633 for single drive DVD recorder systems that receive American ATSC-8VSB digital TV broadcasts. Priced at $20.
  DMN-8683 for dual drive DVD recorder systems that receive American ATSC-8VSB digital TV broadcasts and record to a DVD and hard drive. Priced at $25.
  DMN-8623 for single drive DVD recorder systems that receive European digital TV broadcasts. Fabricated in 0.13 micron technology, priced at $25.
  DMN-8673 for combination HDD and DVD recorder systems that receive European digital TV broadcasts, capable of encoding or decoding two streams simultaneously. Fabricated in 0.13 micron technology, priced at $30.
  DMN-8602 DVD recorder system on chip with integrated NTSC/PAL TV encoder and video pre- and post-processing, used by:
  • Packard Bell
  
  3G DMN DVD recorder system processor chips are DivX Ultra certified.
  DVxpert and DVxpress 10.4M pixel/second MPEG-2 encoder chips for digital video broadcast and production equipment.
  VLE4000 H.264 Main Profile, Level 3 (10.4M pixel per second) broadcast encoder
  VLD4000 H.264 Main Profile, Level 3 decoder and stream analyzer, capable of reporting compression statistics
  DSP processors based on the ZSP processor architecture with low-cost, low-power, and high-performance variants.
  ZEVIO low power 3D graphics & sound processor core. Designed to complement ARM- or ZSP-based systems on chip. Developed in conjunction with KOTO Laboratories in Japan.
  VisionSpectrum VDP-7500 display controller chip for LCD and plasma TVs including a 3D comb filter and support for SDTV, HDTV, and PC resolution inputs and performing scaling and deinterlacing
  Historically, a JPEG and MPEG encoder/decoder for video conferencing in 1991
  Historically, a HDTV chip 1991
• Customers:
  • Sony as of 1999 for the Playstation 2
  • BBC as of 1997 for a digital terrestrial television chip
  • Sony as of 1994 for the Playstation
• Partners:
  • The ZSP group within LSI Logic worked with 4i2i to ensure compatibility between their cores.
  • The ZSP group within LSI Logic works with TIVR to ensure compatibility with their software.
  • partnered with Cabot Communicationsto deliver digital TV set-top box middleware to DVD recorder products using DMN-8623 and DMN-8673 chips.
  • partnered with Beijing E-world in 2003 to provide chips for EVD players.
• Acquisitions:
  • 14-person early H.264 implementer VideoLocus, 2002
  • C-Cube Microsystems, 2001, $851M stock
  • ZSP was acquired by LSI Logic and in 2006 sold to VeriSilicon

VeriSilicon

• Headquarters: Shanghai, China
• Founded: 2001
• employs 140 engineers
• SoC design platform company (multi-market ASIC design company)
• Acquisitions:
  • VeriSilicon acquired ZSP digital signal processor IP core vendor (Plano, TX) in 2006
    • ZSP has an unapologetic CISC instruction set, a 16-bit ISA, unlike its many RISC-based software programmable CPU/DSP core competitors
    • Products:
      • ZSPneo single-issue single-MAC small DSP runs at 220 MHz in .13um
      • ZSP200 dual-issue single-MAC, 5-stage pipeline
      • ZSP400 quad-issue dual-MAC, 5-stage pipeline
      • ZSP500 quad-issue dual-MAC, 8-stage pipeline, with instruction extensions
      • ZSP540 quad-issue quad-MAC 6-ALU, 8-stage pipeline, with instruction extensions
      • ZSP600 six-issue quad-MAC, 8-stage pipeline
    • Customers:
      • Celestial Semiconductor has licensed the ZSP400 for use in, presumably AVS, audio/video chips.
      • Renesas licensed the ZSP500 core in 2005 to run wireless, multimedia, and VoIP applications in 3G mobile/wireless chips.
      • licensed by Yamaha in 2005 for sound, audio/video, and communications products
      • licensed by IBM in 2001
      • licensed by Conexant in 2001
      • licensed by Broadcom in 2000 for voice over internet protocol (VoIP) applications
      • ZSP G2 licensed by Yamaha for multimedia applications
    • Partners:
      • For its library of IP core offerings for turnkey ASIC designs Shanghai, China-based VeriSilicon has licensed the ZSP 400.

Agere

• Location: Allentown, PA
• NYSE: AGR
• Products:
  Vision X115 mobile handset chipset. Capable of decoding H.263, MPEG-4, and H.264 video bitstreams at QVGA or QCIF resolutions at up to 24 fps with simultaneous audio decode. The chipset includes an analog and a digital chip. The digital chip includes an ARM7TDMI-S, ARM926EJ-s, and an Agere DSP16000 DSP processor core. The DSP16000 is for audio processing. The video decode is reportedly performed on a Hantro video core.
• Vendors:
  • Some Agere chips use Hantro video IP coress

Faraday

ComSOC Technology

Atmel

• Analog Devices
  • Products:
    ADSP-BF533 Blackfin DSP chip with dual MACs and a MMU capable of H.264 decode at 640x448 resolution at 30 fps priced at $12.95
    ADSP-BF561 Blackfin DSP chip with dual MACs and a MMU capable of H.264 decode at D1 resolution at 30 fps priced at $19.95
    ADV202 JPEG 2000 chip, for low latency systems (including digital cinema, professional level HDTV camcorders, and wireless networked video devices) priced at $39.90.
    ADV212 JPEG 2000 chip, for digital cinema systems
    ADV213 JPEG 2000 chip, for digital cinema systems, with external buffering so that only 12 (instead of 24) chips are required for a 4K pixel resolution digital cinema system.
    High Density H.264 BP video encoder, Quad CIF or D1 with competitive rate-distortion for the ADSP-BF561 2-way symmetric multiprocessor Blackfin chip.
    Dual Channel H.264 BP video encoder, Dual CIF or 1/2 D1 resolution with competitive rate-distortion for the ADSP-BF533 Blackfin chip.
    MPEG-1, MPEG-2 SP/MP, MPEG4 SP/ASP, WMV9/VC1 up to D1 resolution, H.264 BP, On2 VP7 decode for ADSP-BF533 Blackfin chip.
    MPEG-2, MPEG4 SP/ASP, WMV9 up to 1/2 D1 resolution encode for ADSP-BF533 Blackfin chip.
    A wireless HDMI reference design in partnship with Tzero
    
  • Customers:
    • Beijing Digital TransVideo Technology Co. uses Analog Devices Blackfin chips in its set-top boxes.
    • ZTE Corp. uses Blackfin chips in its voice/video/data set-top box devices
  • People:
    • Rich Greene, chief video architect for compression products
    • Marc Hoffman, Technologist
  • Partners:
    • Emuzed write video encoder and decoder software for Analog Devices Blackfin processors.
• DSP Group
• Frontier Silicon
  • Location: Herts, United Kingdom
  • founded 2001
  • Products:
    FS1030 Paradiso DVB-H / T-DMB / DAB multi-standard baseband receiver chip
    FS5021 Logie DVB-T/DAB decoder including tuner and baseband processor
    FS5022 Logie 2 DVB-T/DAB decoder including tuner and baseband processor
    FS1110G Apollo tuner/receiver and FS1025 Kino 1 baseband processor T-DMB portable multimedia chipset
    Kino 2, lower power, smaller, lower cost enhancement of Kino 1
    
  • Partners:
    • With an Apollo RF front-end chip and Kino T-DMB processor Frontier Silicon has created a T-DMB reference design with a C & S Technology Neptune multimedia processor.
• Freescale (formerly Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector)
  • Location: Austin, TX
  • Products:
    a wide range of chips for analog, sensors, RF, wireless, networking, ASICs, microcontrollers, DSPs, microprocessors
    i.MX31 multimedia applications processor, based on a 532 MHz ARM1136JF-S CPU core with on-chip peripherals including:
    • Hantro 5250 MPEG-4 encoder
    • Imagination Technologies PowerVR MBX Lite 2D/3D graphics core
    • CMOS/CCD image sensor interface
    • image scaler and color space converter
    • image deblocking filter
    • display/TV controller (with interlacing?)
    • other common memory and off-chip peripheral interfaces
    
    i.MX21
  • Vendors:
    • Freescale has licensed a Chips & Media core for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264 video encode and decode and integrated it into an i.MX chip.
• Aspex Semiconductor
  • Location: UK
  • Products:
    Linedancer software programmable video processor. Manufactured in NXP' 0.13um fab. Performance is unclear.
  • Partners:
    • Four Aspex Semiconductor Linedancer Extreme processors running low-level code from Aspex and high level code from Main Concept Multimedia Technologies performs high-definition MPEG-2 encode.
• Arca 方舟科技
  • Products:
    GT1000 Arca1 ISA processor that runs at 166 MHz manufactured in 0.25um technology
    GT2000 Arca2 ISA processor that runs at 330-400 MHz manufactured in 0.18um technology
    PT2000 Arca2 ISA processor that runs at 330-400 MHz with a rich complement of interface peripherals.
    Noah2000 CDMA baseband processor with a 200 MHz Arca2 CPU core and 150 MHz Arca DSP processor core and 3G baseband processing logic.
• Sandbridge Technologies
  • Location: White Plains, NY
  • Products:
    SB3000 4-DSP processor chip C programmable 600 MHz general-purpose DSP chip. MPEG-2 encoder and decoder software as well as H.264 decoder software have been ported to the SB3000 as well as baseband processing, linux, and java.
  • Sandbridge has vectorizing and multi-core parallelizing compiler technology, a multi-core simulator, a posix thread supporting multi-threaded RTOS, an RTL design for a not-yet-manufactured second generation chip with 10x performance, a complete reference design (with WCDMA, WiMax, WiFi, GSM/GPRS, GPS, Analog TV, MPEG4, h.264, and MP3 decoders), and a range of patents related to compilers, SDR communications systems, and multithreaded processors, as well as a fast ARM simulator for x86.
  • Sandbridge is short of cash and investor support for manufacturing a second generation chip and may soon wind down the company.
  • Customers:
    • Sandbridge has at least $10M worth of commitments and projects in progress with at least 4 major mobile phone makers.
• Vivace Semiconductor
  • Location: Beverly, MA
  • Founded: 2005
  • founded by executives and managers of Improv Systems
  • making chips for digital video using Improv Systems' DSP processor cores
  • Products:
    VSP100 QVGA video processor chip
    VSP200 MPEG-4 SP / ASP encode (pixel rate? bitrate? GOP configuration? motion search algorithm?) and MPEG-4 SP / ASP, H.264 (AVC) Baseline Profile at Level 3 (up to 720p), WMV9, DivX, MPEG-2 decode with audio and DRM at 80 MHz. Includes one Improv Systems VLIW processor for audio, 3 Improv Systems VLIW processors for video, and an OpenRISC 1200 host CPU that runs Linux 2.6. Designed for portable video players
    VSP300 MPEG-4 SP / ASP encode (pixel rate? bitrate? GOP configuration? motion search algorithm?) and MPEG-4 SP / ASP, H.264 (AVC) Baseline Profile at Level 3 (up to 720p), WMV9, DivX, MPEG-2 decode with audio and DRM at 200 MHz. Includes one Improv Systems VLIW processor for audio, 3 Improv Systems VLIW processors for video, and an OpenRISC 1200 host CPU that runs Linux 2.6. Designed for integrated DTVs.
    

    The VSP300 seems to have been pulled from the market. Its data sheet was removed from Vivace's web site.

• QuickLogic
• Xilinx
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Nasdaq: XLNX
  • Products:
    XtremeDSP "solution" optimized for multimedia, video and imaging (MVI)
    VSK-4VSX35 Video Starter Kit Virtex-4 SX35, priced at $1495.
    XEVM642 Video Co-Processing development kit, priced at $1995.
    MPEG4 Simple Profile decoder IP core supporting up to D1 (720x486 at 30 fps). Implemented in VHDL. Priced at $20k.
    MPEG4 Simple Profile encoder IP core supporting up to D1 (720x486 at 30 fps). Implemented in VHDL. Priced at $25k.
  • Customers:
    • The Panasonic PT-50LCX63 50-inch rear projection television uses two Xilinx Spartan XC2S50E chips. One for driving a National Semiconductor LVDS driver and the other for formatting input HDMI signals.
• Altera
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Customers:
    • Altera Stratix FPGAs with Nios II processors are used to implement image enhancement features in the Sanyo PLV-Z4 home entertainment LCD projector and projection TVs.
    • The RCA Lyra hand-held digital video player uses Altera FPGAs.
    • Matsushita / Panasonic uses Altera FPGAs and Altera Nios processors in its video broadcast equipment and 3.5G wireless network equipment.
    • Inlet Technologies' Fathom product does real-time high-definition VC-1 encoding in a digital signal processor chip using an Altera Stratix series FPGA to offload digital signal processing functions from the digital signal processor.
  • Partners:
    • Mango DSP provides digital video boards based on Altera chips with reference design FPGA and software.
    • Ateme used Altera's Stratix II FPGAs to create a real-time broadcast quality H.264 encoder system, demonstrated at the NAB2005 trade-show. The system, presumably, operates at SDTV resolution.
    • Texas Instruments Digital Light Projection (DLP) products are enabled by Altera Cyclone, Stratix FPGAs and HardCopy structured ASIC products.

• Microtune
  • Location: Plano, TX
  • Products:
    MT2260 DVB-H multi-band tuner for mobile hand-held devices including cell phones and PDAs, fabbed as a 6x6 die in a SiGe process operates at 2.7 volts and consumes 20 mW in viewing mode, depending on received signal quality, and also has 9 mW power-down and 250 uW sleep modes. The MT2260 operates in the L-Band (1670-1675 MHz), the frequency range planned for a nationwide mobile broadcast TV service in the U.S., as well as in the European UHF frequency range (470-890 MHz), the spectrum expected to be allocated for European mobile TV broadcast. The MT2260 is manufactured by IBM and priced at $5.00 in volumes.
    MT2262 is the same as the MT2260 but only supports the L band.
    Many other tuner products for analog and digital cable, terrestrial, and satellite signals for televisions, set-top boxes, handheld, portable, and automotive applications
    MT2121
    MT2131 tuner for analog terrestrial, digital terrestrial, and digital cable. Supports ATSC 8VSB. 20% lower power than the MT2121. 7x7 mm2 die. Priced at $3.
    
  • Sold Nijmegen, Holland group to Micronas in 2003
  • Customers:
    • The Microtune MT2050 is used in the ARRIS Touchstone series of DOCSIS cable modems.
    • The Pinnacle PCTV 200e USB TV tuner / PVR uses the Microtune MT2060 tuner chip
    • some Samsung digital cable ready televisions use the Microtune MT2121 Tuner and MT1110 Amplifier
    • The ATI WONDER ELITE and ALL-IN-WONDER family of PC video cards use the Microtune MT2050 tuner
    • and many more
  • Partners:
    • Microtune has worked with DiBcom on reference designs for portable televisions
• Sidsa
  • Location: Madrid, Spain
  • Founded: 1992
  • makes multimedia and telecom systems, has chip design capability
  • Products:
    SID16000 DVB-H demodulator for STB and mobile devices. Manufactured in 0.13um technology, includes an ARM7TDMI CPU core at 61 MHz.
    DVB-H IP Encapsulator for transmission of video data over DVB-H signals. Based on a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor with 1GB or RAM and an 80 GB hard disk.
    DVB-H receiver and IP encapsulator.
    EtherTV IPTV gateway. Aggregated MPEG-2 transport streams from satellite, terrestrial, cable, etc. for delivery over an IP network.
    

Vishay

• Products:
  • RFWaves RFW122-M-PA wireless video monitoring reference design based on the Vishay RFW122 transciever chipset uses a 2.4 GHz direct sequence spread spectrum wireless link. Targeted at intercom, baby monitor, home monitoring, and business surveillance applications. Includes a CMOS image sensor and Zoran ZR452x processor for real-time MPEG-4 video and audio encoding. A base unit includes an LCD display, MMC/SD slot for video storage, and a USB interface for access to stored and streamed video.
  • RFW122-M-PA direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) half duplex transceiver, priced at $760.

Digital video compression chips need a source of data. In cameras, the raw data for compression comes from an image sensor. In the past, image sensors were made from arrays of tiny charge coupled devices (CCD). Recently, it has become economical to manufacture image sensors from arrays of CMOS sensors on chips using common chip manufacturing process technologies. Here is a fair description of the trade-offs between CCD and CMOS technology written by Dalsa, a CCD device maker that has also moved into the business of making CMOS sensors. CMOS devices promise to take over the market for camera image sensors, especially in the kinds of low-cost consumer products that are sold in high volumes. Some manufacturers of CMOS image sensor chips are:

• OmniVision Technologies
  • Location: Sunnyvale, CA
  • Selling image sensors for video, still camera, cell phone, video phones, PC cameras, medical systems, toys, and automotive applications.
  • Chip resolutions including:
    5.2 megapixel (QSXGA)
    3.2 megapixel (QXGA)
    2.0 megapixel (UXGA)
    1.3 megapixel (SXGA)
    800x600 (SVGA)
    620x480 (VGA)
    352x288 (CIF)
    112x112
    NTSC and PAL analog image sensors
  • Customers:
    • Lenovo uses OmniVision CMOS image sensors in cell phones that it sells in China.
    • The NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory Picosat and Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Systems Engineering (PaUSE) Mars aerobot prototype uses an OmniVision image sensor.
    • The Ångström Aerospace Corporation MicroLink-1 Nanosatellite uses an OmniVision image sensor.
    • Sony uses an OmniVision chip in the EyeToy USB camera for PlayStation 2
    • Mustek uses 1.3 and 2.0 megapixel Omnivision chips in their combination digital video/still cameras.
    • Cool iCam and Polaroid digital still cameras use 1.3 and 2.0 megapixel Omnivision chips.
    • Motorola uses VGA resolution Omnivision image sensors in cell phones.
    • Sony Ericsson uses VGA resolution Omnivision image sensors in cell phones.
    • and many others...
  • Acquisitions:
    • CDM Optics (Boulder, CO), 2005, $10-20M cash and $8M stock
      • Uses Wavefront Coding, which changes the phase of light passing through a lens onto a CCD image sensor in such a way that a digital processing algorithm can make the image sharp at all depths of field.
      • technology originally developed by W. T. Cathey, Edward Dowski, and R. C. Mercure Jr. at University of Colorodo, Boulder.
      • CMD Optics has a nice gallery of example images
• Dalsa
  • Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  • Toronto Stock Exchange: DSA
  • founded 1980
  • Manufactures CCD and CMOS image sensors for digital photography, medical, and machine vision applications.
• Agilent
• IC Media
• ST Microelectronics
  • Entered the CMOS image sensor chip market after the acquisition of VLSI Vision Ltd. in 1999.
• Conexant
  • Entered the CMOS image sensor chip market after the acquisition of Sierra Imaging Inc. in 2000.
• Zoran
  • Entered the CMOS image sensor chip market after the acquisition of PixelCam Inc. in 2000.
• Micron
  • Entered the CMOS image sensor chip market after the acquisition of Photobit Corp. in 2004.
  • Products:
    MT9M112 1/4 inch 1280x1024 (1.3 megapixel) image sensor for SXGA resolution in camera phones. Capable of 15 fps at full resolution and 30 fps at reduced resolution. With 2.3 square micron pixels. Priced at $8. Volume production in December 2005.
    MT9V125 1/4 inch image sensor for automotive applications. Capable of 30 fps at 27 MHz with 33 ms integration time, supporting NTSC and PAL display formats. With good sensitivity in low light and a -40 to 105 degree (Celsius) temperature range. Priced at $12.
  • Customers:
    • Yes, even some Samsung consumer products use Micron rather than Samsung CMOS image sensors.
• Cypress Semiconductors Corp.
  • Location: Manhasset, NY
  • Products:
    CYIHDSC9000AA 3710x2434 pixel (9.0 megapixel) image sensor capable of 5 fps capture at full resolution or 20 fps at 640x480 resolution with 72dB of dynamic range, built in a 0.13um process technology at 23.3 mm x 15.5 mm with 6.4 micron pixels. Available in February 2006, priced at $90.
    CYIWOSC3000A 1/3 inch optical format 2048x1536 pixel (3.1 megapixel) image sensor capable of 30 fps capture at full resolution with a 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) on-chip with proprietary "Autobrite" light intensity adjustment giving 72db of dynamic range, built with 3-transistor per pixel (3T) technology, available 2006 Q1 for $10
  • uses three transistor (3T) technology
  • Acquisitions:
    • CMOS image sensor maker SMaL Camera (Cambridge, MA, USA) with annual sales of $10M, in 2005 for $42.5M in cash
    • FillFactory (Belgium), with annual sales of $6M, in 2004 for $100M cash
  • Customers:
    • Kodak DCS Pro SLR cameras use Cypress CMOS image sensors.
• Kodak
  • owns patents related to four-transistor (4T) pixel and photo-diode pixel architectures of CMOS image sensors. IBM and TSMC have licensed the technology from Kodak for use in manufacturing CMOS image sensor chips designed by Kodak and designed by other CMOS image sensor chip vendors that outsource the manufacturing of their chips to those companies' fabs.
  • Kodak has used IBM to manufacture 3.1 and 5 megapixel image sensors at its Burlington Vermont .18um fab using 4T sensor technology with 3 micron pixels
  • Acquisitions:
    • imaging division of National Semiconductor in 2004
• MagnaChip
  • Location: Chungbuk, Korea
  • MagnaChip has its own fabs with .35um and .25um digital technologies and mixed signal capability
  • MagnaChip acts as a foundry for other chip vendors.
  • MagnaChip began as a spin-out from Hynix of all non-memory chip production.
  • In order to focus on its CMOS image sensor and foundry business MagnaChip sold its processor design business in 2005 to newly formed Abov Semiconductor, which was founded by investors of GreenChips .
  • Products:
    thin film transistor (TFT) panel controller chips
    CMOS image sensors
    • HV7131GP VGA (300k pixels) 1/4" CMOS image sensor with embedded processor
    • HV7131RP VGA (300k pixels) 1/4.5" CMOS image sensor with embedded processor
    • HV7131R VGA (300k pixels) 1/4.5" CMOS image sensor
    • ICM030E VGA (300k pixels) 1/1.6" CMOS image sensor
    • HV7151SP 1.0 megapixel 1/4" CMOS image sensor with embedded processor
    • HV7161SP 1.3 megapixel 1/3.7" CMOS image sensor with embedded processor
    • HV7171SP 2.1 megapixel 1/2.7" CMOS image sensor with embedded processor
    • ICM130E 1.3 megapixel 1/3.2" CMOS image sensor
    • ICM200E 2.0 megapixel 1/2.6" CMOS image sensor
    • ICM320T 3.2 megapixel 1/2.7" CMOS image sensor
    
    8-bit and 32-bit application processors, smart card, digital media, mixed-signal chips and foundry services
  • Acquisitions:
    • MagnaChip acquired US CMOS image sensor developer IC Media in 2005
    • MagnaChip acquired Japanese CMOS image sensor chip company Isron
  • Customers:
    • Samsung buys CMOS image sensors from MagnaChip
    • LG Electronics buys CMOS image sensors from MagnaChip
    • Hansung buys CMOS image sensors from MagnaChip
• TransChip
  • Location: Ramat Gan, Israel
  • Products:
    TC5740 1/4.5" 640x480 image sensor module with built-in JPEG compression
    TC5747 1/4.5" 640x480 image sensor module with built-in JPEG compression
    TC7730 1/2.7" 1600x1200 image sensor module with built-in JPEG compression
    TC6030 1/3.5" 1280x1024 image sensor module
    TC7030 1/3.5" 1600x1200 image sensor module
• Toshiba America Electronic Components
  • Location: San Jose, CA
  • Dynastron line of CMOS image sensors includes:
    ET8E99-AS 3.2 megapixel 2.7 micron pixel pitch 1/2.6 inch format sensor with incorporated A/D converter for camera phones, capable of QXGA video at 15 frames per second.
  • Camera modules including:
    TCM8210MD 1/4 inch optical format 640x480 sensor capable of 30 fps operation.
    TCM8230MD 1/6 inch optical format 658x494 sensor with 3.75 um pixel pitch, capable of 30 fps operation.
    TCM8240MD 1/3.3 inch optical format 1280x1024 sensor with 3.3 um pixel pitch, capable of 15 fps operation with built-in JPEG encode.
• AMI Semiconductor
  • Location: Pocatello, ID
  • Products:
    AMIS-70700 CMOS image sensor with 750x400 resolution for automotive applications. With 10.6 um pixels, and a 2/3" lens format. Operates at 20 MHz and consumes 300 mW. Priced at $52 in sample quantities.
• PixelPlus
  • Location: South Korea
  • Founded: 2000
  • Nasdaq: PXPL
  • Products:
    • PO2010 CIF (352X288) 1/7 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 5.6 square micron pixels
    • PO3010 CIF (352X288) 1/11 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 3.6 square micron pixels
    • PO2030 VGA (640X480) 1/4.5 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 5.2 square micron pixels
    • PO3030 VGA (640X480) 1/6.2 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 3.6 square micron pixels
    • PO2130 1280x1024 1/2 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 4.8 square micron pixels
    • PO3130 1280x1024 1/3.3 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 3.3 square micron pixels
    • PO4130 1280x1024 1/4 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 2.8 square micron pixels
    • PO1200 1600x1200 1/2.7 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 3.3 square micron pixels
    • PA1200 1600x1200 1/2.7 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 3.3 square micron pixels with auto-focus algorithm
    • PS1320 2048x1572 1/3.3 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 2.25 square micron pixels with only Bayer RGB output
    • PC1025 510x480 1/4.1 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 5.6x7 square micron pixels with NTSC or PAL output
    • PC1044 768x576 1/4.1 inch optical format CMOS image sensor with 4.6 square micron pixels with NTSC or PAL output
• Avago
• Sony
• STMicroelectronics

Toshiba, Matsushita/Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Philips, Nikon, Kodak, Contax, EOS, and e2v technologies are leading manufacturers of CCD image sensor chips.

• Intersil
  • Location: Milpitas, CA
  • Nasdaq: ISIL
  • Many products including analog switches, muxes, crosspoint switches, CAT-5 line drivers, digitizers with analog front ends, amplifiers, sync separators, and Genlock PLLs also display controller related chips such as gamma buffers and ambient light sensors and other non-video products.
  • Customers:
    • Samsung Super-PVA flat panel televisions use an Intersil programmable buffer to quickly switch between gamma curves in order to offer viewing angle performance comparable with plasma displays.
• Auvitek International
  • Location: Fremont, CA
  • Founded: 2004
  • Products:
    AU8501 ATSC 8-VSB digital TV (DTV) demodulator and NTSC analog TV demodulator chip.
    AU8502 same as the 8501 but in a larger chip package.
• Xceive
  • Location: Santa Clara, CA
  • Founded: 2001
  • Products:
    • XC3028 tuner receiver chip decodes analog CVBS video, extracts baseband audio, and delivers digitally modulated video signals.
    • XC2028 tuner receiver chip decodes analog CVBS video, and extracts baseband audio.
  • Partners:
    • The Xceive XC3028 was used on a Micronas MicViper reference design.

Digital View

• Location: Morgan Hill, CA
• Flat panel display controller boards based on Pixelworks chips targeting the retail store advertising market with controllers for a range of display sizes with composite, S-video, or component video input and support for video format conversation, contrast, brightness adjustment, scaling, rotation, picture-in-picture, 2D generated graphics, and audio.

Mango DSP

• Location: Norwalk, CT
• Makes boards for video surveillance, defense, HDTV, broadcast, and video telecommunications systems.
• Products:
  Raven-HX video server with TI 720 MHz DM642 DSP capable of H.264 (AVC) encoding at 702x480 resolution at 30 fps with stereo audio and streaming of the video over a LAN.
  Bluejay CPCI multiprocessor card with up to 16 1GHz TMS320C6415T DSP chips and up to 4 Altera Stratix II EP2S130 FPGAs and 4 GB on-chip memory. Programmable for high performance DSP tasks such as multi-stream high resolution video encoding, decoding, or transcoding for military or surveillance applications.
  and many other video related programmable DSP / FPGA boards
• Partners:
  • Mango DSP sells video system boards with Texas Instruments chips
  • Mango DSP sells video system boards with Altera chips

Inova Semiconductors

• Location: Munich, Germany
• sells gigabit serial transmitter and receiver (GigaSTaR) chips
• Products:
  GigaSTaR multimedia evaluation board can transmit HDTV video, audio, and USB 2.0 data over CAT-5 ethernet cable for up to 30 meters to another GigaSTaR board that can display the video and audio data.
  

GAO Group including:

• GAO Research
• GAO Tek
• others

• Location: Toronto, Canada
• Founded: 1992
• develops, licenses, and sells many diverse technologies
• Products:
  H.261 video encoder/decoder software.
  H.263 video encoder/decoder software. Supports up to CIF resolution.
  H.264 video encoder/decoder software.
  MPEG-2 video encoder/decoder software. Supports up to HDTV resolution with many encoding conrols.
  MPEG-4 video encoder/decoder software. Designed to be ported to embedded processors and to support hardware accelerated algorithm components.
  Video phone software
  MV937 VGA to NTSC or PAL converter.
  VGA110 composite video or S-vide to VGA converter.
  Various motion JPEG or MPEG-4 ethernet or wirless ethernet connected video cameras.
  Network video servers for ethernet or wirless ethernet.
  Digital video projectors.
  HVC400 MPEG-4, MPEG-2, or MPEG-1 video acquisition card for PCI.
  HVC404 4-channel MPEG-4, MPEG-2, or MPEG-1 video acquisition card for PCI.
  V.Cap2 USB video capture card. Encodes in JPEG format.
  CATV test instruments, including optical power meters, signal level meters, and time deflection reflect meters.
  Digital video recorders, including multi-channel and real-time DVRs.
  HB1008 8-channel CIF H.264 Baseline profile DVR card for PCI PCs.
  HB1504 4-channel CIF H.264 Baseline profile DVR card for PCI PCs.
  HB1504D 4-channel CIF H.264 Baseline profile decoder card for PCI PCs.
  HB1508 8-channel CIF H.264 Baseline profile DVR card for PCI PCs.
  HB1521 D1 (SDTV) H.264 Baseline profile DVR card for PCI PCs.
  HB1524 4-channel D1 (SDTV) H.264 Baseline profile DVR card for PCI PCs.
  DM642 general-purpose programmable video processing board.
  DM642 network image processing kit.
  DM642 multi-channel general-purpose programmable video processing board.
  AVE6800 8-channel CIF resolution H.264 or MPEG-4 video processing board.
  AVE6800Q 4-channel CIF resolution H.264 or MPEG-4 video processing board.
  AVE7200Q D1 (SDTV) resolution H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, or motion JPEG video processing board.
  
• The GAO Group has many well known customers.

BroadMotion

• Location: Vancouver, Canada
• Products:
  JPEG2000 on a TI TMS320C64x or TMS320DM64x DSP combined with a Altera Cyclone II or Xilinx Spartan-3
  

• Sorenson
• Morgan Multimedia
• Main Concept Multimedia Technologies
  • Location: Apache, Germany
  • founded 1993
  • Products:
    H.264 Encoder and decoder for Windows supporting main and baseline profile, configurable picture groupings (GOP), interlace and progressive scan, with AAC audio support
    MPEG Encoder for Windows performs batch conversion of AVI and QuickTime to MPEG-2
    MPEG Encoder for Macintosh performs batch conversion of QuickTime to MPEG-2
    DVCPro 25/50 professional DV encoder and decoder for Windows
    DV Codec as a standard Video for Windows codec with 4:1:1 color re-sampling and PAL/NTSC detection
    Motion JPEG codec for Windows
    MainConcept MPEG Pro Plug-In for Adobe Premier Pro allowing native MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 editing without format conversion in a SDTV-only version and a version with HDTV (720p, 1080i) support
    EVE v2 (Easy Video Editing) beginner level video editing software with support for DVD authoring and VCD and SVCD for Windows
    MainActor v5 professional level video editing for Windows and SuSE 9.2, Mandrake/Mandriva 10.1, and Debian Linux
    MainConcept PVR MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 PVR recording software for Windows
    MainVision compositing, effects, and vector animation generator for Windows
    DVD Video Loops series of MPEG-2 texture animations in PAL format
    Texture Loops organic background video clips in NTSC or PAL format
  • Partners:
    • Four Aspex Semiconductor Linedancer Extreme processors running low-level code from Aspex and high level code from Main Concept performs high-definition MPEG-2 encode.
    • Main Concept has many other partners including many well-known names
  • member of the MPEG Industry Forum
• Thin multimedia
• W&W Communications
  • Location: Santa Clara, CA with a development office in Beijing
  • Founded: 2001
  • Products:
    WW1100 H.264 Baseline Profile encoder for video conferencing devices up to 1080p30 or 6x D1 or 24x CIF streams with intra macroblock refresh, short and long term refrence frames, and arbitrary slice numbers with 35 ms encode/decode latency optimized.
    WW2100 H.264 Baseline Profile decoder for video conferencing devices up to 1080p30 or 6x D1 or 24x CIF streams with I-frame request with 35 ms encode/decode latency optimized.
    WW1101 H.264 Baseline Profile encoder for broadcast equipment up to 1080i60 or 1080p30 with the same feature set as the WW1100.
    WW2101 H.264 Baseline Profile decoder for broadcast equipment up to 1080i60 or 1080p30. With the same feature set as the WW2100.
    WW1200B H.264 Baseline Profile encoder written for TI TMS320C64x or TMS320DM64x chips. Operates at up to D1 resolution (at an unspecifed frame rate) with less than 150 ms delay.
    WW2200B H.264 Baseline Profile decoder written for TI TMS320C64x or TMS320DM64x chips. Operates at up to D1 resolution (at an unspecifed frame rate) with less than 150 ms delay.
    WW1200A Same as the WW1200B but for Freescale MSC8144 and MSC8122 chips.
    WW2200A Same as the WW2200B but for Freescale MSC8144 and MSC8122 chips.
    Transcoder Suite Multi-format transcode for DSP chips.
  • Partners:
    • W&W is part of the ARM Connected Community
    • W&W is partners with Altera
    • W&W writes their video software for Texas Instruments DSP processor chips.
    • W&W writes their video software for Texas Instruments DSP processor chips.
    • W&W software has been run on Mango DSP TI based boards.
    • DSP Research uses the W&W encoder software in its H.264 board and system products.
    • W&W is partners with embedded TCP/IP stack software vendor Treck
  • Acquisitions:
    • W&W acquired DSP Research in 2003.
• PacketVideo
• Wipro Technologies
• HCL Technologies
• Spirit DSP
• Tata Elxsi
  • Location: Bangalore, India
  • Founded: 1989
  • Tata Elxsi is part of the Tata Group companies
  • Partners:
    • Tata Elxsi is a design center for Tensilica
    • Tata Elxsi develops software optimized for Stretch chips.
• Ittiam
  • Location: Bangalore, India
  • Primarily software IP products, but also HDL cores
  • founded by former executives from TI in India
  • Products:
    MPEG-4 Simple Profile Level 0-3, H.263 Baseline profile, encoder / decoder up to CIF resolution for ARM7, ARM9, TI DSC21, DSC25, C64x, and ADI Blackfin as well as decode-only for StarCore SC1200 and SC1400
    MPEG-4 FGS Profile (ammendment 4) encoder/decoder up to CIF (352x288 pixel) resolution for ARM7, ARM9, and TI DSC21 chips
    H.264 Baseline Profile and Main Profile Level 3 Decoder for TI C64x and DM64x chips
    MPEG2 Main Profile at Main Level to H.264 Main Profile Level 3 D1 resolution transcoder / scaler for TI C64x and DM64x chips
    speech codecs, audio codecs, modems, VoIP, stacks, wireless lan, etc.
    Ittiam sells an IP video phone (IPVP) reference design.
  • Customers:
    • Premier Image Technology Corp (Taiwan) has licensed Ittiam software for tapeless digital camcorder devices.
    • Multiple web cam and digital still camera products from Veo use motion JPEG and MPEG-4 video compression software IP from Ittiam.
    • Sony Europe was an early licensee of the Ittiam MPEG-4 decoder.
  • Partners:
    • Ittiam ports video software to TI DaVinci DSP chips.
    • Ittiam developed the software for Tensilica's video engine product offering.
    • with Microsoft on developing video solutions for Windows Mobile Portable Media Center devices.
    • with DivX Networks as of mid-2003
• Delphi Communications Systems
• Emuzed (division of Flextronix)
  • Emuzed creates these kinds of embedded software:
    • Mobile Applications
    • Systems and Middleware
    • Encoders and Decoders
  • Emuzed has encoder and/or decoder software for these video coding standards:
    • MPEG-4
    • H.263
    • MJPEG
    • MPEG-2
    • MPEG-4 ASP
    • H.264
    • WMV-9
  • Emuzed can optimize its software for these chip architectures:
    • ARM 7
    • ARM 9
    • ARM 11
    • Intel StrongARM
    • XScale
    • ADI Blackfin
    • TI c55x
    • TI c64x
    • TI OMAP1x
    • TI OMAP2x
    • TI DM270
    • TI DM320
    • TI DaVinci
    • Motorola DragonBall MX1
    • Trimedia
    • Pentium
  • Emuzed can port its software to these operating systesms:
    • Symbian OS 6.0, 7.0, 7.0s, 8.0 and 9.0
    • Microsoft Mobile, SmartPhone, WinCE, PocketPC & Windows
    • (Embedded) Linux
    • Palm
    • Nucleus +
    • Nokia Series 60, 80, 90
    • UIQ
  • Partners:
    • Emuzed software has been run on Falanx processor core.
• Floreat
• IAP
• MCubeWorks
• Philips Software
• SoftRISC
• Telecom Lab Italia - System On Chip Division
  • Location: Turin, Italy
  • Partners:
    • The System On Chip division within Telecom Lab Italia is an ARM ATAP design center partner.
    • The System On Chip division within Telecom Lab Italia is an Altera design center partner.
    • Open SystemC Initiative
    • STMicroelectronics
    • Synopsys IP Catalyst partner
    • The System On Chip division within Telecom Lab Italia is a Xilinx AllianceCORE partner.
• Prodys
• DSP Algorithms
• Ingenient Technologies
  • Acquired and fully owned by Shah Capital Management as of 2006.
  • develops software for TI chip based devices including for:
    • personal media players
    • ISDB-T / S-DMB / T-DMB / DVB-H receivers
    • digital video cameras
    • wired / wireless (WiFi) network cameras
    • digital video recorders
    • remote monitoring systems
    • multi-standard IP set-top boxes
    • video IP servers
    • IP video phone
    • home multimedia gateways
    • multi-channel broadcast quality encoders
    • multi-channel broadcast quality transraters
    • multi-channel broadcast quality transcoders
  • Partners:
    • TI
    • Coding Technologies
    • Dolby Laboratories
    • DivX, Inc.
    • Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
    • Microsoft
• Fastcom
• Sasken
• Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer Society) Consisting of many institutes focusing on areas as diverse as wood research and applied solid state physics. Those involved in digital video include:
  • Heinrich-Hertz-Institut for Telecommunications.
    • Location: Berlin, Germany
    • run by Thomas Wiegand
    • the Image Processing group has developed many digital video products including:
      H.264 SDKs for Windows and Linux development
      H.264 software for embedded multimedia applications
      publications on H.264 over digital broadcasts
      H.264 test bitstreams and encoders
      DVB-H chipset IP core based around ARC CPU cores
      multi projection technology
      head mounted displays
      video format conversion technology
      immersive media technology
      SDKs for real-time analysis and manipulation of video data
  • Institut Integrierte Schaltungen (IIS) [Institute for Integrated Circuits]
    • Location: Erlangen, Germany
    • Fraunhofer dables in many fields including Audio & Multimedia, Digital Broadcasting Systems, Embedded Communication, IC-Design, Imaging, Medical Technology, Training & Courses, Virtual ASIC Foundry, and X-Ray Technology
    • Focused on various MPEG-4 profiles with an apparent lack of interest in H.264/AVC
    • partners with everybody under the sun and in many "aliances", Fraunhofer licenses MPEG-4 SP and ASP software and streaming and system software for a wide range of PC and embedded processors and operating systems.
• Vanguard Software Solutions
  • Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
  • DSP software IP and design services offerings for PC and embedded processors including:
    H.264 Baseline profile video encode at SDTV resolution and frame rate for the Stretch 5610 processor.
    H.264 Main profile video encode on a Texas Instruments TMS320DM642 processor chip on a Vitec VP3-PMC board at SDTV resolution with only 6-8 frames latency for broadcast applications at 500k to 4M bps bitrate performing constant bitrate control (CBR) without frame skipping.
    MPEG-4 Simple Profile decoder optimized for ARM processors, but written entirely in portable C code (no assembly), including DirectShow Microsoft Windows support and certification by DivX Networks for Handheld Profile.
    H.264 Baseline profile decoder optimized for ARM processors, but written entirely in portable C code (no assembly).
    H.264 / AVC codec supporting Baseline and Main profiles at D1 resolution and frame rate with simultaneous encode and decode including de-interlacing, noise reduction filtering, scaling, and scene change and fade detection on an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0 GHz with Hyperthreading.
• DResearch
  • Products:
    L-MJPEG Motion JPEG for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1300 and PNX1500
    H.263+ for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia chips
• Moonlight Cordless
  • Location: Israel
  • distributed in Taiwan by Intelligent Control Technology (iCT)
  • Products:
    H.264 Decoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500
    H.264 Encoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500
    MPEG-2 Decoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500
    MPEG-2 Encoder for NXP Nexperia / Trimedia PNX1500
    End user PC video coding software
• Trinity Convergence
  • Location: Cambridge, UK
  • Products:
    VeriCall Edge V2IP is a software offering for a complete voice and video over IP (V2IP) telephone product, including support for H.263 or MPEG-4 video encoding and decoding for the Freescale i.MX21.
    Trinity Convergence has other products strictly for voice over IP
  • Partners:
    • Freescale has partnered with Trinity Convergence for the development of V2IP products
    • others
• TIVR Communications
  • Location: Bangalore, India
  • Tivr is a Hindi word meaning fast
  • founded by IIT alumni
  • Products:
    H.264 Baseline Profile decoder. Has been ported to the Nokia 6681 220 MHz ARM9 CPU based chip. Beside bitstream decode, software also performs color space conversion for display. On a 220 MHz ARM9, QCIF (176x144) runs at 60 fps with color space conversion and 80 fps without. QVGA (320x240) runs at 20 fps with color space conversion and 25 fps without. The software has been ported to ARM9, ARM9e, ARM11, StrongARM, Xscale, and wireless MMX.
  • Partners:
    • TIVR partnered with LSI Logic to ensure that its software is compatible with ZSP based systems before LSI Logic sold ZSP to VeriSilicon.
• ArcSoft
  • Location: Fremont, CA
  • Founded: 1994
  • sells end user and embedded software for images and video play
  • has developed video encoding and decoding software for standards:
    • MPEG-1
    • MPEG-2
    • MPEG-4
    • H.263
    • H.264
  • has ported video encode and decode software to processor architectures:
    • Intel x86
    • Intel mobile processors
    • TI DM320
    • ARM
    • MIPS

Proprietary codec vendors

• On2 Technologies
  • Location: Clifton Park, NY
  • American Stock Exchange: ONT
  • Codecs:
    • VP3
    • VP4
    • VP5
    • VP6
  • Products:
    Flix video authoring software.
    Truemotion VP7 video encoder.
    Truemotion VP6 video encoder.
  • Support for VP6 has been integrated into the Macromedia Flash Player 8, which is primarily used for video publishing on the web.
• DivX Networks
  • Location: San Diego, CA
  • private company, $17M series D venture financing in 2005
  • Codecs:
    • DivX
  • This is a totally different company from the Zoom TV DivX video disk no-return rental service available from Circuit City, which was established in 1998 and terminated in 2001.
• Ligos
  • Codecs:
    • Indeo
• Actimagine
  • Location: Paris, France
  • sells software with a proprietary coding standard
  • Customers:
    • Fisher Price uses Actimagine software in its Pixter Multimedia toy.
  • Partners:
    • Actimagine has ported its codec to the Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas ARM7 and ARM9 based BlueStreak microcontrollers. Achieved QVGA video at 24 fps at 266 MHz.
• Microsoft
  • Location: Redmond, WA
  • Codecs:
    • VC-1
    • Windows Media Video, which as been licensed to implementers:

      This table was derived from Microsoft's Windows Media Licensing web site

      Company	Technology	Licensed Platform Name/Model Number	Technology Tested
      chip vendor Advanced Micro Devices	WMV Decode	CS13xx	WMV SPLL, SPML, MPLL, MPML
      chip vendor Analog Devices Inc.	WMA Decode; WMV Decode	ADSP-21535/ADSP-21535PKB-300X	WMA v2-v9: 5kbps - 384kbps; WMV MPML
      chip vendor Pixelworks / Equator Technologies	WMV Decode	MAP-CA BSP-15	MP@ML
      chip vendor ESS Technology, Inc.	WMV Decode	ES6168FA	WMV Decode v7
      chip vendor Freescale Semiconductor	RTSP	M341 Nexus MCore Processor
      chip vendor Freescale Semiconductor	WMV Decode	SC140 (StarCore)	WMV 8
      chip vendor Freescale Semiconductor	WMV Decode	TI OMAP/1510	WMV9 SPLL
      chip vendor Freescale Semiconductor	WMV Decode	Motorola Starcore DSP / MSC8101	WMV 9 SPLL
      software vendor Ingenient Technologies	WMV Decode	TI TMS320DM270	WMV v9 SPLL, SPML
      software vendor Ingenient Technologies	WMV Decode	TI DM320/TMS320DM320	WMV v9 SPLL, SPML
      software vendor InterVideo Inc.	WMV Decode	Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz, HT	WMV v7-v9 SPLL, SPML
      software vendor Ittiam Systems Pvt. Ltd.	WMV Decode	DM342/TMS320DM320	WMV v7-v9 SPML
      chip vendor National Semiconductor Corporation	WMV Decode	Trimedia CS1300
      software vendor PacketVideo Corporation	WMV Decode	MSM6500/ARM926EJ-S	WMV v2-v9: SPML
      software vendor Sasken Communication Technologies Limited	WMV Decode	OMAP - 1510 / ES 2.6	WMV v7, v8, v9: SPLL
      chip vendor Texas Instruments	WMV 8 Decoder	OMAP1510
      chip vendor Texas Instruments	WMV Decode	OMAP1510 / OMAP1510CGZG1A
      chip vendor Texas Instruments	WMV Decode	DM642 / TMX320DM642

  • Microsoft, with partner, Harris, also sells IPTV software, which is used by
    • British Telecom
• Real Networks
  • Codecs:
    • Real Video
• Apple Computers
  • Location: Cupertino, CA
  • Codecs:
    • QuickTime
• Vimio
  • Location: Sweden
  • Codecs:
    • Vimio video coding for mobile phones. Capable of 80x60 resolution at 10 fps with 10kbps for color or QCIF (176x144) at 10 fps with 20-30 kbps.
  • Partners:
    • SonyEricsson
    • Symbian
    • Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)
    • Nokia
  • Customers:
    • MTC-Vodafone Bahrain

Media networking software vendors

• Silicon & Software Systems (S3)
  • Location: Dublin, Ireland and Prague, Czech Republic and Wroclaw, POLAND
  • S3 has apparently schizophrenic offerings of mobile TV software, mixed-signal semiconductor IP, and networking software. I bet that there is an interesting story there.
  • Products:
    onHandTV software for TV on mobile devices supporting IPDC over DVB-H and delivered with a reference TV design, middleware, and the required networking protocol stacks.
    Mixed signal semiconductor IP for ADC, DAC, PLL, AFE, LVDS, and Bandgap filters
    S3AxS-DSLAM,S3AxS-CMTS, S3AxS-WiMAX, triple play network processing software for Intel IXP2xxx implementing DSLAM, CMTS, WiMAX, and metro / edge routing
    embeddedMIND high level networking framework software
  • Partners:
    • S3 has partnered with Hantro to develop a DVB-H software evaluation platform.
    • S3 has partnered with OpenTV and ST to develop set-top box (STB) reference designs.
    • onHandTV has been ported to NXP' Nexperia and 2.5G and 3G mobile phone chips.
  • S3 also offers system design consulting services
• EnCentrus
  • Location: Quebec, Canada
  • Products:
    CT-2000 unidirectional conditional access multimedia software including MPEG2, WM9, and MPEG4 decode at up to HDTV resolutions and frame rates for set-top boxes implemented with the Broadcom 7038 chip.
    DVD Player
    DVD Authoring & Burning
  • Partners:
    • Broadcom
• DideoNET
• Location: Seoul, South Korea
• Founded: 2001
• DideoNET sells software for IPTV and video on demand (VOD) media streaming for transmission and receiver equipment.
• DideoNET has written their own H.264 software.
• DideoNET primarily sells "100% made in Korea" products to other Korean companies.
• Products:
  SMV1 is a MPEG-4 Simple Profile Encoder and Decoder designed to run on Xscale and x86 Processors
  SMV2 is a H.264 Main Profile Encoder and Decoder designed to run on Xscale and x86 Processors

Other embedded video software vendors

• Ligos
• Envivio
• Nextreaming
• Pixtree Technologies
  • Location: Seoul, Korea
  • Products:
    Content Management System, allows sorting based on extracted meta data
    real-time MPEG-4 (Visual Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile), H.264 (Baseline profile), H.263 Level 10, and WMV encoding decoding and streaming for ARM9 based mobile devices
    Digital Media Broadcasting (DMB) encode and decode
• Iwedia
  • Location: Rennes, France
  • many big name partners and customers
  • selling modular middleware IP components for digital terrestrial television broadcast and receiver equipment and broadband transmission and receiver equipment supporting MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 audio/video content at a range of resolutions
• ConFocus
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• DigiOn
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Mediabolic
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• NDS
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Nero
  • Location: Karlsbad-Ittersbach, Germany
  • Founded: 1995
  • sells various multimedia end-user consumer software
  • Products:
    Nero Digital H.264 (AVC) Baseline, Main, Extended, and High Profile decoder core capable of up to 4096x4096 resolution. 720x480 resolution at 30fps at 50 MHz. 1920x1080 at 30 fps at 200 MHz. Written in VHDL. Interfaces to a 64-bit shared bus to SDR or DDR SDRAM.
  • Partners:
    • Sigma Designs
• Oregan Networks
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Syabas
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Tivella
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• MediaCoder
  • An open source GUI that calls other open source tools for demultiplexing, scaling, transcoding audio and video, and remultiplexing in a wide range of formats.
  • Written and maintained by Stanley Huang of Shanghai, China
• Shanghai High-Definition Digital Technology Innovation Center (HDIC)
  • Founded and run by Professor Feng of Shanghai Jiaotong University
  • Does contract multimedia software development for large western companies, often spinning off groups as subsidiaries of those companies.
  • Deeply involved in AVS and China DTV standardization efforts.
  • Has developed a China Digital Multimedia Broadcast Terrestrial and Handheld (CDMB-T and CDMB-H) chip in 0.13um technology to be in production in early 2007. Received a $4M loan from China Development Bank for the project.
  • Partners:
    • STMicroelectronics
    • ATI (prior to AMD acquisition of ATI)

End-user video software vendors

• Corel
  • Acquisitions:
    • InterVideo
      • Location: Fremont, CA
      • acquired by Corel in 2006 for $196M
      • Products:
        WinDVD Windows PC DVD playing software with support for a remote control
        WinDVD Creator Windows PC home editing, authoring, and burning of DVD videos
        Home Theater Windows PC radio, television, DVD, music, photo, and video clip viewer with support for a remote control
        DVD Copy Windows PC DVD duplication
      • Acquisitions:
        • ULead
          • acquired in 2005 for $68M
• SightSpeed
  • Location: Berkeley, CA
  • Founded: 2001 from reserch led by Professor Toby Berger of Cornell University.
  • Product: PC video conferencing software (freeware)
  • SightSpeed is the Skype of the video world. The software is user friendly to set up and use and the video quality is suprisingly good.

Avid

• A system vendor with internal chip design capability
• Divisions:
  • Pinnacle Systems

Cisco

• Partners:
  • Sigma Designs
• Acquisitions:
  • In 2005 for $6.9 billion in cash Cisco acquired Scientific-Atlanta
    • A STB vendor with internal chip design capability
    • Scientific-Atlanta's big competitor, General Instruments, was acquired by Motorola in 1999 and became Motorola Broadband.
    • The Scientific-Atlanta division of Cisco acquired UB Video in 2006.
      • Products:
        UBLive-264-C64 encoder & decoder for H.264 AVC (?? profile) for TI TMS320C64x chips at 10.4M pixels per second, encoding at 64 kbps to 1.5 Mbps supporting progressive or interlaced displays and including noise filtering, scaling, and error masking.
        UBLive-263 encoder & decoder for H.263 profiles 0, 3, and 5 (Baseline, H.263+, and H.263++) for TI TMS320C62x, TMS320C64x, and TMS320C67x chips at 20 kbps to 2 Mpbs at up to 30 fps (?? frame size)
        UBLive-mp4 encoder & decoder for MPEG-4 visual simple profile at level 3 for Pentium and TI TMS320C6x chips at 14 kbps to 20 Mbps at up to 30 fps (?? frame size)
      • Partners:
        • UB Video ports video coding software to Texas Instruments chips
        • Delphi Communication Systems provides wireless software for GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS, CDMA2000 and other 3G wireless communications protocols as a parner with UB Video

LG Electronics

• Location: South Korea
• Products:
  funded by NAB to create digital terrestrial broadcast to analog (RF modulated) video converters.
  H20 DVB-S2 HDTV satellite receiver STB
• Customers:
  • DirectTV deploys the H20 DVB-S2 STB in the United States

Video Servers

• Alcatel
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Concurrent Computer Corporation
  • Location: Duluth, GA
  • Real-time Linux implementations, including implementations specifically designs for Video On Demand (VOD) systems.
  • Products:
    MediaHawk VOD server hardware and Linux based software for broadband operators.
  • Partners:
    • Sigma Designs
• Envivio
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Infovalue
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Kasenna
  • Location: Mountain View, CA
  • sells IPTV VOD equipment and software
  • Products:
    MediaBase XMP video management, distribution, and delivery software
    vForge video web services software
    vFusion video server managemetn software
    LivingRoom set-top box software
    GigaBase media server supporting up to 400 3 megabit per second VOD streams and storing up to 1200 hours of MPEG-2 content. SpeedBase media server supporting up to 600 megabit per second of streaming VOD bandwidth in a 3RU configuration. OmniBase media server for low stream count (less than 90 megabit per second total bandwidth), cost sensitive applications such as in hospitality and education.
  • Partners:
    • Sigma Designs
• Minerva Networks
  • Location: Santa Clara, CA
  • Products:
    VideoConcentrator8000 (VC8000) headend video concentrator including preprocessing and encoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 (AVC) at 1 to 15 megabits per second for up to 7 simultaneous video streams and IP transmission of the streams.
    Redundancy Management System (RMS) for ensuring reliable availability of VC8000 headend systems
  • Minerva also offers customization, integration, and other consulting services.
  • Partners:
    • Sigma Designs
• SeaChange
  • partners with Sigma Designs
• Streaming21
  • partners with Sigma Designs

Medical Imaging / Video

• Visiostar
  • Location: Paris, France
  • Visiostar also sells video surveillance and medical imaging systems
  • Products:
    VISIOMIP Server data server
    VISIOMIP Station viewer
    VISIOMIP Express internet server
    Telemanager network control software VDOGUARD XP8 video encoder and network transmitter for 1-8 video cameras.
    VDOGUARD XP4 video encoder and network transmitter for 1-4 video cameras.
    VDOGUARD USB video encoder and network transmitter for 1 USB video camera.

Displays

• DeepLight
  • Location: Los Angeles, CA
  • founded to develop technology invented and patented atCambridge University in England
  • DeepLight makes 3D displays that require no glasses. Their displays operate by sending a different view of each pixel in different directions so that each eye sees a different view of the displayed image.
  • targetting a wide range of applications
  • Products:
    DS-16 SXGA resolution with 6 views and 24-bit color depth on a 25 inch screen controlled by 1 TI DLP light reflector chip
    DS-318 SXGA resolution with 18 views and 24-bit color depth on a 25 inch screen controlled by 3 TI DLP light reflector chips
    PS-336 SXGA resolution with 36 views and 24-bit color depth on a 60 inch screen controlled by 3 TI DLP light reflector chips
    PS-360 SXGA resolution with 60 views and 24-bit color depth on a 60 inch screen controlled by 3 TI DLP light reflector chips
    PS-3120 SXGA and WXGA resolution with 120 views and 24-bit color depth on a variable size screen controlled by 3 TI DLP light reflector chips

Others

• Mitsubishi Electric
• EGT
• Vitec Multimedia
  • Location: France
  • Vitec Multimedia sells many MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 decoder and encoder board products and software packages for them. Most boards have a PCI interface and include Windows PC drivers, some are based on the Texas Instruments' TMS320DM642 chip. Others are based on an unknown video processing chip.
  • partners with TI
• Aviosys International
  • Location: Taipei, Taiwan
  • Products:
    DTV 6010, 6200, and 6300 TV tuner boards for PDP and LCD displays supporting PiP, alpha blending, and deinterlacing
    IP Kamera 9000 / 9000A Plus Ethernet digital video camera supporting 640x480 resolution and motion detection.
    9100 / 9100A 4x composite video capture with 640x480 resolution and ethernet IP transmission server with support for one audio input and round-robin switching between video sources and motion detection with automatic still image capture and email/FTP transmission.
    DVD PLUS 3010, 3020, 3060, 3070, 3088 MPEG-2 video capture and playback PCI cards supporting D1 resolution and frame rates based on a Magnum/Cirrus Logic/Stream Machine SM2210 (CS92210) video encoder/decoder chip.
    DVR PLUS 3210, 3230, 3238 MPEG-4 / MPEG-2 video capture and playback PCI cards supporting D1 resolution and frame rates
• Winnov
  • equipment for video encoding and IP broadcast
  • targeting many markets
  • many big name customers and partners
• Vydeo Integrated Systems
  • Location: Littleton, CO
  • makes various boards and boxes for conversion between (mostly uncompressed) digital video formats (SDI, DV, optical, HD-HDV).
  • also custom design services
• Thomson
  • Thomson is a giant international company that does some of everything.
  • Brands:
    • Technicolor
    • Grass Valley
    • RCA
    • Thomson
  • Markets:
    • movie production equipment
      • post production and sound services
      • film processing and handling services
      • film and trailer distribution
      • film preservation and restoration
      • DVD and video manufacturing
      • production, conversion, and delivery systems for digital cinema
    • television production equipment
      • cameras
      • servers / storage media
      • editing controllers
      • switchers and effects generators
      • routers
      • mobile production truck equipment
    • cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcast receivers
    • video over DSL (IPTV) receivers
    • DVD (and CD) replication
    • consumer electronics devices and components
    • portable video/audio players
    • DVD players
    • television sets
  • Products:
    Grass Valley Infinity digital media HDTV resolution broadcast camcorder that records with JPEG2000 using two Analog Devices ADV202 chips for both encode and decode. The camcorder also records in DV format for SDTV recording or MPEG-2 for SDTV or HDTV.
    funded by NAB to create digital terrestrial broadcast to analog (RF modulated) video converters.
    many other products
  • Vendors:
    • Thomson uses the Analog Devices ADV202 chip in the GrassValley Infinity digital media HDTV resolution broadcast camcorder.
  • Partners:
    • Zoran has partnered with Thomson Tuner Group to create digital to analog reference designs to enable CRT televisions and set-top boxes to display ATSC A-74 DTV signals. The solution uses the Zoran SupraHD640 DTV processor and Cascade 2 demodulator with a Thomson ATSC tuner.
  • Acquisitions:
    • Japanese video editing software firm Canopus was acquired by the Grass Valley business unit in 2005 for $108M.
• Jupiter Systems
  • Location: San Leandro, CA
  • Jupiter makes multi-screen and display wall controller equipment for controlling multiple CRTs or multiple projectors for applications such as airport information displays or monitoring transportation systems.
• Kaleidescape Canada, Inc.
  • Makes a home media server that records DVDs to hard disk and serves it over ethernet to players through the house
  • A system vendor with internal chip design capability
• Digeo
  • A system vendor with internal chip design capability
• Creative Labs
  • A system vendor with internal chip design capability
• Rockwell Collins
  • A system vendor with internal chip design capability
  • AirShow
• NEC Electronics America subsidiary of NEC Electronics
  • Location: Santa Clara, CA
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
  • NEC Electronics America makes a wide range of chips including:
    TFT LCD display controllers for 3.5 to 21.3 inch displays at QVGA to UXGA resolution for Medical, point of sale (POS), mobile, measurement, and game devices.
    uPD64012 MPEG-2 decoder supporting multiple streams at standard television resolution with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    uPD61120 MPEG-2 decoder supporting multiple streams at standard television resolution with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces based on 2 MIPS Technologies 4Kc cores
    uPD61126 MPEG-2 decoder supporting multiple streams at standard television resolution with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces based on 2 MIPS Technologies 4Kc cores with enhanced security features for set-top boxes
    uPD61130 MPEG-2 decoder supporting multiple streams at standard television resolution with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces based on a NEC VR4120A MIPS ISA processor core
    uPD61132 MPEG-2 decoder supporting multiple streams at standard television resolution with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces based on a NEC VR4120A MIPS ISA processor core
    uPD61051 MPEG-2 encoder with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    uPD61052 MPEG-2 encoder with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    uPD61151 MPEG-2 encoder with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    uPD61152 MPEG-2 encoder with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    uPD61153/4 MPEG-2 encoder with noise filters and a range of standard video interfaces
    networking communications
    IEEE-1394
    serial ATA
    cell-based and structured ASICs for other companies
    DRAMs
    automotive
    power management
    microprocessors and microcontrollers
  • NEC has an internal IP "platform" for developing media chips called platformOViA. It is similar to Toshiba MeP or Matushita Unifier.
• Toshiba America Electronic Components
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
  • Partners:
    • Sigma Designs
• Samsung Electronics
  • Location: South Korea
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
  • Products:
    5 megapixel (QSXGA) CMOS image sensor for mobile phones, digital cameras, and camcorders made on 300 mm wafers with .13um feature sizes and 2.2 x 2.2 micron pixel size with a built-in VGA resolution subsampling function and 30 fps sampling rate
    3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensor for mobile phones, digital cameras, and camcorders made on 300 mm wafers with .13um feature sizes and 2.25 x 2.25 micron pixel size
• Sony
  • Location: Japan
  • NYSE: SNE
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
• Matsushita / Panasonic LSI
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
  • Products:
    Unifier internal media processor IP platform from which Matsushita build digital media chips. Similar to Toshiba MeP or NEC platformOViA.
    chipset for drives supporting Blu-Ray (BD), DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and all CD formats
    MN2DS0002, MN2DS0003 single-chip LSI DVD controller made in .13um CMOS technology with six-layer copper wiring
    MN10200 series DVD player system controller
    MN102H series DVD-RAM system controller
    MN85572 MPEG-2 AV encoder
    MN673748 DV codec
    AN2546FH / AN2526FH LCD display controllers
    MN2WS0010 is an ASIC LSI chip for HDTV systems that contains an interface to SDRAM and Rambus memory for descrambling of the transport stream and extraction of a elementary streams and AV decode.
    MN102H76F, MN102H81G, MN101E11G NTSC comb filter, closed caption, and on-screen display (OSD) chip
    MN101E04G, MN101E02H, NTSC/PAL/SECAM comb filter, closed caption, and on-screen display (OSD) chip
    MN82840 comb filter
    MN101C46F, MN101C47C, MN101C47D, MN102H75K, MN102H85K microcomputer for analog NTSC television control
    AN2533FH and MN101C00 video camera display signal processing controller chip set
    MN101D06, MN101D08, MN101D10 VCR controller chip
  • Acquisitions:
    • Elixent
      • Location: Bristol, UK
      • Elixent developed an IP core for reconfigurable logic that could be used to implement accelerator logic for digital video processing.
  • Legal:
    • August 2005, sued MediaTek and its customers OPPO Digital Inc. and Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. claiming infringent of 3 patents in MediaTek DVD player chips
• NTT Electronics
  • Location: Japan
  • Products:
    VASA/C and VASA/D MPEG-2 encoder / decoder chip for 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080-24p.
    SC10KE and SC10KD compact HDTV MPEG-2 video encoder / decoder module based on a VASA chip.
    SC1010E, SC2010E, SC2020E credit card sized MPEG-2 SDTV encoder / decoder modules.
    HE3000, HD3000, HE3100, HD3100 rack mount HDTV or SDTV video encoder / decoders
  • Vendors:
    • NTT Electronics uses Tensilica Xtensa processor core inside the image processing ASIC for the JVC GR-HD-1 HD camcorder
• Fujitsu
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
• IBM
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
• JVC
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
• Philips
  • Philips (spelled with just one "L") is a giant company that makes many (mostly electrically powered) products from light bulbs to television sets to integrated circuits
  • Partners:
    • Intel and Philips have a joint initiative to market home entertainment systems built around Intel chips. It is unclear what impact this has on Philips' own semiconductor developments.
    • Philips' STB810 Nexperia-based set-top box (STB) reference design is available to customers with Amino's IPTV STB software stack.
• Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., Semiconductor Company
  • A system vendor with its own chip design and fabrication capability
  • Products:
    LC74230 DVD player chip with ARM7TDMI-S CPU, demodulator and audio/video decoder
    LC74186E Digital TV microcontroller with a PowerPC 405 CPU at 216 MHz and NTSC decode with 2-channel MPEG-2 MP@HL decode for 480i / 480p resolution.
    LC74986NWF resolution converter for NTSC/PAL and DTV signals to WXGA for flat panel displays
    LA7605M video signal processor for flat panel display with multi-stream scaling, filtering, and image enhancement.
    LC897496 HD-DVD, DVD, CD playback and record including DRM, fabbed in 0.18-micron CMOS, production quantities available in 2006 Q3.
    LC897491, LC897492, and LC897800 DVD recorder chips
• Chunghwa Telecom
  • Taiwan's national telecom company
  • Has internal chip design capability
• Telecom Italia
  • Italy's national telecom company
  • Has internal chip design capability
• Brasil Telecom
  • Brazil's national telecom company
  • Has internal chip design capability