DiBcom the French mobile TV chip maker which always said the multi-protocol route was a barren one in mobile TV chips, has come out with the mother of all multi-protocol mobile TV chips ‘ supporting every mobile TV type you can imagine. Still, how was DiBcom to know how fragmented this market was to become, so let’s not blame it for a change of direction.
We’re reasonably certain that the chip will be too heavy on battery to put in handsets, although DiBcom says the opposite. But we think this is a move to take a big chunk of the laptop and netbook market for mobile TV. DiBcom was once dominant in DVB-H chips and 2 years ahead of the market and remains strong in the lower power DVB-T market. It says that the devices targeted by what it calls its Octopus chip include the automotive market, PC’s and notebooks, PMP, PNDs (personal navigation devices), mobile phones as well as LCD TV and set tops market.
DiBcom says its platform is based on a programmable architecture which enables one design to be aimed at CMMB, DVB-T, DVB-H, DVB-SH, ISDB-T (1SEG & Full-SEG) and T-DMB. Other emerging standards such as ATSC M/H, DVB-T2, and any others will follow.
According to DiBcom, other existing multi-standard components combine the circuitry of some standards in one chip with minimum optimization, though we’re not really sure who it is talking about here, no-one we know admits to doing that. The Octopus uses one broadcast specific, vector signal processor which can handle each standard by loading new microcode. The VSP engine is integrated with a multi-mode channel decoder and MAC, memory and a power management unit (PMU), each separated for power consumption gains, and designed in 65nm geometry and comes with its own multi-band RF tuner, in either a single or diversity (dual-antenna) configuration.
It will be even more interesting one we have data on power consumption and chip size. If those umbers are right, this could make DiBcom highly competitive once again.
DiBcom reckons that its design makes for high performance at low power, given that there are no unnecessary hardware duplications, which is a watchword for all mobile TV chip makers. The chip also has dedicated embedded descramblers for conditional access (CAS) systems. Octopus component samples will be available in early Q2 2009 and the chip will be on show at MWC in Barcelona later in the month.