System-on-chip design for TV-centric home networks

Abstract

We design a low cost, high performance system-on-chip with video/audio/data processing engines, open standard 32-bit RISC microprocessor, and networking processor unit. We use system-level modeling technology to design and verify H.264, MPEG-4 AAC, and MP3 codecs. We adopt a transaction-level verification technique for self-checking and regression testing of the design. The SoC incorporates peripherals, such as UART, USB, 100/10 Mbps Ethernet, IEEE 1394, ATAPI, Utopia, WiFi, and SVGA. We used real-time Linux as the software. The design can be used to build an inexpensive "TV-centric" multimedia service-center for the home; it provides functions for digital TV, DVD recording, video-on-demand, interactive games, set top box, home networking, and network computer terminal.