REFERENCE DESIGN RUNDOWN

IntAct and Texas Instruments Collaborate on IPTV Reference Design
intactos.com
IntAct, an Amino Technologies plc company, has announced that it will produce a full reference design based on the AmiNET124 IPTV set-top box (STB). The design is expected to incorporate the Texas Instruments TMS320DM642 720 MHz DSP-based digital media processor and will offer OEMs a reliable and proven technical blueprint. The move to create a reference design from this STB potentially opens the IPTV market to new OEM entrants, supporting the IPTV industry's growth and increasing the availability of consumer premises equipment from different vendors. TI's DM642 processor coupled with the IntAct software stack is expected to enable the same price/performance advantage for H.264 that has been demonstrated with MPEG-2 in the past. The reference design additionally includes IntAct's H.264 video codec.

INTACT SOFTWARE LTD., Alpharetta, GA. (678) 636-6012.

Key Components

TI TMS320DM642 720 MHz DSP This digital media processor supports MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 formats and processes standard definition (SD) video decoding for the emerging H.264 format. It is based on the second-gen VelociTI VLIW architecture (VelociTI.2) developed by TI. It has application-specific hardware logic, on-chip memory, a twolevel cache-based architecture and a diverse set of peripherals. At a clock rate of 720 MHz, performance is up to 5,760 MIPS. In addition, the DM642 can produce four 16-bit MACs per cycle for a total of 2,880 MMACS or eight 8-bit MACs per cycle for a total of 5,760 MMACS.

IntAct Software Stack The IntAct MPEG decoder software package is designed specificallyfor IPTV set-top boxes and supports the latest generation of video encoding standards. Designed as a modular system using consistent interfaces, it can be kept up-to-date with additional modules to support the latest decoding technology. Features include:

• Highly portable and can run across multiple STBs based on different CPU architectures (PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, x86, SHx, etc.).
• Ability to remotely manage/control IP STBs regardless of manufacturer.
• Supports off the shelf and custom user-interface applications.