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Home networking standards will direct IGRS-compliant multimedia chips
Vivace Semiconductor has announced it has signed an agreement with the IGRS Engineering Lab, to jointly develop reference designs based on Vivace's chips that can be used to develop products that are compliant with the new home networking standard.
Vivace Semiconductor has announced it has signed an agreement with the IGRS Engineering Lab, to jointly develop reference designs based on Vivace's chips that can be used to develop products that are compliant with the new home networking standard. In addition, Vivace announced it has joined the IGRS (Intelligent Grouping and Resource Sharing) work group and standardisation effort. The start-up intends to develop the first media processing chips from a local Chinese supplier that offer support of the emerging protocol. Vivace, as a promoting member of IGRS, joins close to 80 other electronics companies participating in the China-specific effort to develop a standard way for various devices (such as TVs, projectors, PMPs, mobile phones, printers and digital media adapters) to communicate and share resources over a common networking protocol.Under the agreement, Vivace will work with IGRS Engineering Lab to jointly develop a reference design with Vivace's media processing chips, targeting digital TV and set-top box applications. "It is important that we work with semiconductor suppliers such as Vivace to implement the IGRS standard in working silicon and demonstrate its utility in multi-device environments," Dr. Sun Yuning, President of the IGRS Information Technology Engineering Centre. "Vivace has demonstrated technical advantages with its processor architecture, and their ability to support a variety of standards quickly and efficiently make them an ideal candidate to develop IGRS compliant solutions. We are looking forward to working with them and the other IGRS participants to develop systems that take advantage of the potential of IGRS."Engineers from Vivace and IGRS Engineering Lab will work together to extend the capabilities of its core technology to support IGRS standard features into its VSP200 and VSP300 processor designs. The companies have formed a Joint Technological Committee, which will reside in Vivace's Beijing-based Partner Application Engineering Zone. The committee will address the roles of future key chip technologies to enable enhanced features under the IGRS protocol. In addition to their initial work on developing IGRS SmartTV solutions, the joint team will work on an IGRS-recommended media subsystem SoC and solution for satellite device developers and manufacturers. Support will include DRM, data codec and command link standards to the portfolio of support already part of the high-end parts in the Vivace series."Vivace's strategy is focused on the convergence of digital applications in consumer electronics and that is completely aligned with the IGRS vision," said Cary Ussery, president and CEO of Vivace. "We are committed to developing and supporting technology and standards that enable convergence, both in China specifically and throughout the world. We are pleased to be actively participating in the IGRS specification and roadmap process, and look forward to implementing the capabilities in our products."
