Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: National Semiconductor
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 April 2001
National in strategic alliance with
TriMedia
National Semiconductor has formed a strategic alliance with TriMedia Technologies to add world-class multimedia capability to National's family of Geode processors.
National Semiconductor has formed a strategic alliance with TriMedia Technologies to add world-class multimedia capability to National's family of Geode processors As part of the alliance, National will license the TriMedia TM32A media processor core for use in all Geode products
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 5 Jan 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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In addition, National has acquired a substantial equity stake in TriMedia, a leading developer of processor cores and sophisticated software tools and applications for advanced digital consumer products.
Together, the two companies will bring enhanced multimedia, video and audio capability to the rapidly growing information appliance (IA) market.
TriMedia's 32bit VLIW (very long instruction word) core will be used by National's Information Appliance Group and be applied to the personal access device (PAD), set-top box and thin-client markets.
Terms of the equity arrangement are not being disclosed.
"National and TriMedia are creating the ideal solution for high-end multimedia applications that is more efficient than increasing clock speed in the central processing unit", said Michael Polacek, vice president of National's Information Appliance Division.
"The combination of the Geode x86 compatibility with TriMedia media processing capability provides the most highly integrated, best-performing solution on the market today".
"We are very pleased that National will integrate the versatile and high-performance TriMedia programmable processor core into their Geode products", said Cees Hartgring, CEO of TriMedia.
"This will provide National's customers with critical technological advantages over conventional products.
The TriMedia processor core is well suited for high-performance Internet-based applications such as streaming media, e-commerce, gaming, and other two-way interactive services as well as a wide variety of new television entertainment services such as video-on-demand and personal video recording employing an internal hard disk drive".
With this agreement, National gains an immediate ability to extend the performance of its market-leading Geode product family by offering advanced multimedia processing capability.
As applied to National's target markets - thin clients, set-top boxes and personal Internet access devices - the TriMedia processor core will enhance the performance of high-end audio, video, and graphics media processing.
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