Set-top boxes, personal video recorders, and surveillance systems are just some of the applications earmarked for the Cypher 7008, which boasts a complete audio and video signal-processing subsystem. Developed by WISchip International, this single chip can encode audio and video streams into most popular standard formats. Dual 166-MHz MIPS processor cores, specialized image-processing logic, and a suite of system interfaces enable the encoder to replace multiple chips in previous designs.
Arbitrary downscaling, adaptive RGB Bayer reconstruction, and color conversion and correction are among the chip's image-preprocessing features. Other user-controllable features include cropping and chromic suppression support and horizontal seven-tap and vertical five-tap filtering.
The Cypher 7008 handles AC3 and MP3 encoding for audio streams. It delivers MPEG-4, MPEG-2.1, H.263, MPEG-1, and motion JPEG (MJPEG) encoded video streams, as well as video in Apple Quicktime, Microsoft ASF, and AVI formats. Also, it delivers uncompressed video or MPEG Elementary, Transport, and Program streams. There's support for full D1 NTSC and PAL video resolutions as well.
Beyond that, the encoder features a 32-bit PCI host bus interface as well as USB 2.0, 10/100-Mbit/s Ethernet, CardBus, and double-data-rate DRAM interfaces. A host parallel interface and an I2S control port are available, too. Another version of the chip, the Cypher 7108, adds an ATA-compatible disk-drive controller that can handle UDMA 66/100-MHz data transfers.
In sample quantities, the Cypher 7008 costs less than $30. The 7108 goes for slightly more.
WISchip International Ltd. www.wischip.com (408) 526-1000