low cost MPEG4 codec (from Atmel )

Back this summer Altera hosted a conference to promote using their device for DSP and Image Processing. One of the companies that came was BARCO. They license cores for JPEG/MPEG compression.

Derek

Atmel does have FPGA products, but that is hardly their main product line. They have extensive memory products, processors, and application specific chips.

They have also been a significant custom/ASIC vendor and foundry.

What you are looking at almost certainly did not go through a simple FPGA-2-ASIC process, given the on-chip CPU is an ARM.

It may have been prototyped in FPGAs (as many ASICs are these days), but not with their FPGAs (too small). Either Xilinx or Altera would be more likely candidates.

On the other hand, the chip is mostly many existing IP blocks, so if their development flow is reliable enough, and their simulation/verification supports stitching many IP blocks together, it may not have been prototyped at all.

The low price point is because they expect to sell it in high volume, and it does not have any of the silicon overheads of an FPGA. Just like any other custom SOC.

Sure. In big, expensive FPGAs, with the ARM as an additional chip.

Philip

Philip Freidin Fliptronics

"T Lee" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

No, you might use FPGAs for prototyping, but in the end you synthesize in an ASIC flow. The ASIC conversion improve pricing, but not down to standard cell pricing. Typically you use a gate array, and those are not as effective as standard cell. You hardly fit the AT76C120 on a single FPGA, and you are not going to get any good pricing for the end product.

Nice chip, but it's MPEG-4 at 30 fps (good), CIF resolution (320x240 - yuck). They list one of its applications is a PVR.... Who's going to build a PVR out of that?

They list one of its applications is a PVR.... Who's going to build a PVR out of that?

Maybe for a wrist watch.

Derek