Alliance to develop DVB-H chipset IP

The Heinrich-Hertz-Institute is working with ARC International to further the development and commercialisation of consumer products based on DVB-H technology.

The Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has concluded a wide-ranging partnership deal with ARC International to further the development and commercialisation of consumer products based on DVB-H technology.

The Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) is an industry-led consortium of over 250 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries committed to designing global DVB standards.

As part of this partnership, scientists at the renowned Fraunhofer Institute are using the low-power, small-gate count ARC 625D core to develop DVB-H chipset intellectual property (IP) that will provide consumers with mobile access to high-quality multimedia content.

ARC will gain access to portions of the resulting DVB-H IP from the Fraunhofer Institute's R and D efforts.

DVB-H enabled devices (based on the H.264 and AAC-Plus standards) are expected to deliver DVD-quality video and audio at datarates of less than 1Mbit/s.

This emerging technology promises to enable full-motion video over wireless, satellite and ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) Internet connections.

"Configurable technology was a natural choice", said Dr Benno Stabernack, Head of the Embedded Systems Group at Fraunhofer HHI.

"By adopting the ARC 625D processor core, our scientists will be able to quickly develop application-specific processors that meet the power consumption and performance needs of emerging multimedia applications for handheld appliances".

"This type of flexibility allows our designers to quickly adapt to evolving standards and customer requirements".

"With its reputation as a major developer of multimedia technology, Fraunhofer's choice of the 625D core to develop a next generation H.264 solution demonstrates the power of configurable computing", said Derek Meyer, senior vice president of sales and marketing at ARC International.

"The ability to add new instructions and remove unneeded functions for a given application provides a two-fold benefit".

"First, by developing a custom instruction set, Fraunhofer extended its IP into the silicon".

"Second, it created a design that will be harder to duplicate".

Back to top