As part of the introduction Philips will announce the first two Nexperia chips, the NX2700 and NX2600. These previously figured on Philips' road map for its TriMedia very long instruction word (VLIW) as the TM2700 and TM2600. They have now been taken as the starting point for a Nexperia road map that will integrate MIPS RISC processor cores with TriMedia and extend to 64-bit operation.

Philips claims that the platform style could reduce design time for such iterations to as little as one-tenth the time needed to design a conventional chip, or from 18 months to a couple of months.

Nexperia is the hardware and software library from which Philips chip engineers will develop all system-on-silicon ICs for applications in digital televisions, set-top boxes and similar video-oriented consumer equipment. It is based on the TriMedia processor core and MIPS RISC processor cores together with a library of software components and on-chip hardware components. Philips has selected the European-developed PI-bus as its on-chip bus to link hardware components.

The PI is a 32-bit, 75-MHz bus that controls device blocks and lower speed media transfers. It complies with the Open Microprocessor Initiative (OMI) PI bus standard. A second on-chip bus, the DVP, is a 64-bit 133- to 166-MHz pathway designed to support video and high-performance graphics-data transfers.

"Product life cycles . . . are now measured in months rather than years and the products themselves are becoming much more highly featured," said Guenther Dengel, managing director of Philips Semiconductors consumer systems division.

Dengel said the consumer electronics industry is at the beginning of an explosion in the variety of equipment types being developed and in the digital functions and communications features being called for in each. "The only way to solve this, without having to create individual solutions for every application IC, is to reuse proven hardware and software components in a mix-and-match fashion."

One result of the adoption of the Nexperia platform by Philips will be a greater emphasis on software programmability and re-programmability.

New structures

Until now the digitization of consumer electronics has been mainly the replacement of analog function-specific components with digital equivalents, said Theo Claasen, chief technology officer at Philips Semiconductors. "Functions which are programmable mean new structures and new functions start entering the equipment that were not previously possible and there is no longer an equivalence between function and silicon implementation. For example we can add a V.90 modem either as a hardware core or as software. The approach gives cost, power and flexibility benefits and it even allows the function to change after equipment is in the field."

Dengel said, "One moment you could be watching a high-definition TV program, the next taking a video call, while checking a stock price on the Web, then reading customized newspapers and your e-mail."

In conjunction with the unveiling of Nexperia Philips announced the first chips designed for high-definition receivers and set-top boxes. The NX2600 and NX2700 are based on the TM32 32-bit VLIW core with additional hardware support for MPEG-2 decoding up to main profile at high level (MP@HL) in support of high-definition TV display.

In a digital TV or set-top box the NX2600 and NX2700 handle transport stream demultiplexing, audio and video decoding and support a reverse communications channel. All 18 formats of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) broadcast standard are supported as well as Digital Satellite System (DSS).

The primary difference between the chips is that the NX2700 supports high-definition output and two simultaneous video streams allowing equipment to show both digital and analog broadcasts simultaneously or two standard-definition digital broadcasts simultaneously. The NX2600 can decode high-definition but supports standard-definition output and a single video stream.

Fast and flexible

"Of all the digital-TV solutions announced to date," said Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group, "only the NX-2000 processors are flexible enough to dedicate processing power to enhancing regular analog TV-picture quality from TV, cable, VHS and DVD sources when not decoding a full HDTV picture."

The NX26/2700 are being introduced in 0.25-micron CMOS with clock frequency of up to 166-MHz where they can achieve a peak performance of 6.5-billion operations per second.

The Nexperia road map calls for a subsequent series of devices, the NX8000 series, to be introduced from late 2000 onwards. These will include a MIPS processor core and additional hardware acceleration for graphics. The NX2600/2700 support a PCI/XIO interface for off-chip peripherals while the next DVP chip will also support 1394 and USB interfaces. "The NX2600/2700 can be applied to European standards but are not optimized for them," said Julian Humphreys, marketing manager for the video business line within Philips Semiconductors' consumer systems division. "The NX8300 will be optimized for European standards."

Although the Nexperia platform will be a major manifestation of TriMedia cores, the system-level, general-purpose Tri- Media processors will continue to be developed, officials said. Philips' 32-bit TM1300 is shipping now at 143 MHz and there are plans to follow this with the TM1350 in the first quarter of 2000 and the 64-bit TM1400 running at 300 MHz in the third quarter of 2001.