Last week we at Synergy have announced the HDX Ready SoC initiative. We've listed a bunch of partners participating in the program. We also presented two suppliers who build their own reference implementations HDX Ready SoC.
I realize that trying to explain it at the keynote in a few minutes is difficult because we do not get to dig deep into technical details. So this is my opportunity to dig deeper and answer some of the questions you might have about this new initiative.
What HDX Ready SoC initiative?
The idea here is to build a new class of high-performance, low-power, low-cost devices that can reach HDX Ready certification. To do this, we have adopted the approach of SoC based on ARM processors. This is the same approach taken by many other devices such as mobile phones and tablets.
Inside the chip, it is an ARM processor, 3D accelerator, multimedia encoders / decoders, DMA, USB controller, just about everything you need on a computer. Only memory and storage is external to the device.
A device based on these reference implementations should have the SoC chip, memory / flash and physical connectors for USB, video and audio. This could fit in a wide range of form factors.
What is a reference implementation HDX Ready SoC?
Texas Instruments and nComputing build chips other partners can incorporate into their devices. This is not exclusive and our HDX Ready SoC initiative is open to other SoC partners. The idea is that anyone who wants to build a loan HDX system does not have to go through all the complexity in the design of the machine and all engineering work required to optimize performance.
Having multiple reference implementations is good for customers. Here is the list of partners participating in the program HDX Ready SoC
HDX Ready SoC How to get low cost? custom chips are very expensive to develop.
Certainly custom chips are expensive to develop. SOCs are modern but built using a considerable percentage of intellectual property (IP) of existing blocks. Parts such as CPU, memory controller, USB controller, some codecs are common to a lot of chips.
The SOC architects define some silicon surface in order to hit the desired point of cost and these blocks layout for maximum efficiency. In addition, designers introduce custom blocks that make the SOC especially effective for the intended application. In this case, the high quality and ICA HDX made entirely using the high performance and great user experience HDX.
The reasons for the IT and nComputing include all key blocks required for the HDX certification.
HDX SoC is a future proof! (Yeah right)
I felt a lot of skepticism about the demand for future proof. I understand that for many devices there are not future proof.
In the configuration HDX Ready SoC, we have our version of Receiver for ARM running on a Linux distribution. We will continue to add new versions of Receiver for ARM in the future on top of this platform.
Well, that does not prove future proof entirely, I understand. But it is the basis for future-proof. Having the ability to run the receiver in the software gives us great flexibility for the future.
One thing that separates form HDX our competitors is that we are about to do smarter things where our competitors are about to do things by brute force. By doing things smarter, it creates a lot of opportunities for innovation in the software. The reason we needed some hardware in the SoC is because some operations such as video decoding can not be made in CPU. These areas are well understood. It is also important to note that some of the codecs available in our SOCs are still very popular today, but will become quite popular in the future. When new versions receiver needed will turn on these codec-expanding high-definition HDX experience and make the chips future proof.
Have receiver in the software in the end point means we can add new optimizations in the future. Looking at our roadmap HDX, I can say with great confidence that the HDX Ready SoC devices will have a long life because they can be updated over the lifetime of the endpoint, unlike other solutions.
What's next?
We work very hard to release a version of the receptor that will build acceleration on board is on the SoC included in these devices. This does not necessarily mean a building, you can use on an ARM device, but we intend to keep it as simple as possible for you, the end user to stay updated with the latest HDX features. Stay tuned, we should see these new devices will be available next year.
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