The Generation9 System On a Chip (SOC) ICs are highly integrated to drive down system cost while maintaining flexibility to allow system designers a single cost-effective, leading edge platform that will support multiple products (DTV, STB, PVR, etc.) in multiple markets (ATSC, ARIB, DVB, Cable POD, DirecTV, etc.).
The Generation9-Elite series of ICs from Zoran builds upon the production proven, class leading technology and integration of the Generation9 family of products by bringing a new level of performance to Digital TV products. The Elite family adds dual CPUs, higher memory bandwidth and increased application flexibility and performance to the high level of integration and outstanding quality of the previous generation of Integrated DTV System ICs. The Generation 9-Elite IC architecture includes a multi-stream universal decoder
which can decode and playback two fully independent A/V streams using separate time bases.
Dual CPU Performance
The dual CPU architecture of the Elite family allows for significantly enhanced application software performance. This is accomplished by
using one CPU, to perform all of the tightly coupled real-time tasks in the system. All of the low-level drivers and the real-time operating
system run on the other identical CPU. This allows nearly all of the available CPU bandwidth of the second CPU, the Application CPU; to
be available for user defined application processing.
Elite Software Architecture
The Elite software architecture developed for use in the Elite products allow for software written for Zoran’s Generation9 products to seamlessly migrate to the Elite products. This "virtual device" software abstraction layer provides full Zoran API support to software running on the Application CPU. Elite API support is fully backwards compatible with the Generation9 product line allowing software written for the Generation9 ICs to run unchanged on the Elite system.
Drop-In Upgrade
The Elite series of ICs are designed to be a drop-in upgrade to the existing Generation9 IC. The Elites are signal and API compatible with their respective Generation9 counterparts.
Dual High Performance 32-bit CPUs (540 MIPS)
PCI, IDE, Local BUS, UART, IR and SPI
Worldwide Conditional Access
Copy Protection
Flexi-Port Flexible Multi-channel I/O
Video Orthogonality
Video Signal Processor for Picture Improvement
High Quality Video Scalers
Floating-Point Media-DSP
Innovative Tex/Warp Engines
Dual Display Architecture
Pin Compatible to Generation 9
Software/API Compatible to Generation 9
Access to World Markets
A Global System Architecture provides a programmable system
that supports multiple international standards including European
DVB, US ATSC, US Cable CableCARD, the Japanese ARIB
standard, and proprietary standards such as NDS ICAM.
Generation9-Elite ICs incorporate AES encryption/decryption
to/from the HDD or any other system I/O interface to protect any
digital content.
Facilitates Modular and Expandable Systems
Due to the flexible architecture and worldwide conditional access capabilities, a single hardware design can be retargeted at multiple world markets.
A core design built around this architecture provides access to enhanced features such as PVR, additional broadcast reception
types, PIP, POP and Dual Display STBs (e.g. sharing a single
PVR HDD). OEMs can build a simple A/V system for time-to-market
and enhance it quickly with additional market enabling
features.
Flexible Integration
Dual MIPS 32-Bit CPUs provide industry leading levels of both
system and application support
Cost-effective integration is achieved through the use of multiple
optimized micro-controllers as well as an advanced proprietary
floating point DSP and an industry standard CPU
A Media DSP for real-time media processing separate from the
Application CPU, rendering it Ideal for audio and enabled for
Streaming Media
The specialized Video Signal Processor (VSP) enables user
defined features including motion adaptive de-interlacing
algorithms, reverse 3:2 pulldown techniques, and film mode
detection. Custom algorithms can be running in significantly less
time than it would take to implement in hardware
The Texture Processor Engine (TEX/Warp) provides TV centric
graphics effects and ARIB acceleration not available to other
architectures. Implement 3D TV effects without the cost of a 3D
graphics engine as both graphics and video can be treated as
user interface objects
The Flexi-Port Multi-Channel I/O function meets the requirements
of the most demanding DTV, PVR and STB architectures by
providing true Orthogonality with different input and output
formats including; Serial or Parallel TS, Multi BT.656 and DVI In or
Out.
Block Diagram
Gen9 ELite Block Diagram
