Design verification of an 18-million-transistor digital television and media processor chip

Abstract

This paper describes the verification methodology that has been followed in the design of NX-2700 - a digital television and media processor chip from Philips Semiconductors. Targeted at the digital television (DTV) markets, the NX-2700 processor not only supports all of the eighteen ATSC DTV formats, from standard-definition to wide-angle, high-definition video, but has also the power to handle video and audio source decoding (high-level MPEG-2, AC-3 and ProLogic audio, closed captioning, etc.). Featuring a programmable, general-purpose VLIW CPU core (that implements many non-trivial multimedia algorithms, coordinates all on-chip activities, and runs a small real-time operating system), NX-2700 is a true example of a system-on-a-chip; the CPU core, aided by an array of peripheral devices (multimedia co-processors and input-output units) and high-performance buses, facilitates concurrent processing of audio, video, graphics, and communication-data.