SoC Mates Hard Drives With Set Top Boxes

Designed to add hard-drive capability to set-top boxes, the STi5514 system-on-chip (SoC) allows concurrent demultiplexing of up to three transport streams and multiple descrambling modes including DVB, DES and multiple-condition access. The device integrates a programmable transport stream demultiplexer block, 32-bit system CPU, audio/video MPEG-2 decoder, display and graphics features, digital video encoder, and peripheral support.The integrated IDE (ATA) interface allows the SoC to be connected to one or two external storage devices such as hard-disk drives, DVD-ROM or DVD-RAM drives, each operating with its own interface protocol. Burst-mode data transfer rates up to 66 MB/s are supported. In a 0.18 µm technology, PBGA388, price is $25 each/100,000. STMICROELECTRONICS, INC., Lexington, MA. (781) 861-2650.