RISC Processor Platform Opens Residential Gateways

Intended for the development of low-cost media gateways into the home, the WVM49RX TX system RISC platform is a reference design that includes hardware and an operating system. It contains a 200 MHz, 64-bit TMPR4925 or TMP4926 MIPS-based RISC processor, a TC86C001FG IDE/USB companion chip, and a Sigma Designs EM8485 MPEG-1/-2/-4 decoder chip that supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding for high-quality audio/video streaming. The hardware runs under the Monta Vista Linux 3.0 operating system. The RISC processor has an integrated memory controller, peripheral interconnect controller, a UART, timer, serial peripheral interface and an audio codec. A triple-data-encryption standard engine is included on the TMPR4926 processor. The TC86C001FG companion chip supports the Inter-IC bus, USB host, USB device and IDE Ultra SDMA-66 interface. The reference design includes drivers, documentation, development board and application demo software that enable further customization. Price is $3,000 each. TOSHIBA AMERICA ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS INC., San Jose, CA. (408) 526-2454.