NXP showcases world's first ultra low-power, high performance set top box platform

“The NXP PNX847x/8x/9x platform provides an optimized system that significantly reduces the manufacturer bill-of-materials costs and power consumption enabling an improved home entertainment experience,” said Christos Lagomichos, executive vice president, business unit home, NXP Semiconductors. “With STBs and DVRs getting more and more complicated, power efficiency has been one of the major challenges for the industry. By leveraging low-power and high-performance processors from ARM, we are able to bring the next-generation HD STB and DVR features to our customers.”

The fast growing adoption of broadcast and broadband services into home entertainment equipment means that digital TVs and STBs are required to deliver higher processing performance within the tight power envelope, for compact, high-density thermally-constrained environments. The ARM Cortex-M3 processor coordinates the power management for the entire system, enabling the NXP PNX847x/8x/9x family to deliver flexible power optimization with an ultra-low power stand-by operation, enabling STB OEMs to comply with the latest EnergyStar and Voluntary Agreement.

Based on the high-performance, power-efficient ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor architecture, the NXP PNX847x/8x/9x delivers advanced system level performance for secure, multi-room DVR video streaming on home networks and for fast execution of Java-based STB middleware engines. Combined with NXPs rich set of hardware and DSP-based content decoding technologies, the ARM Cortex-A9 processors, with its comprehensive internet software ecosystem, delivers industry-leading performance for user interface environments, based on Adobe Flash and web browser technologies. By adopting the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor for the STB market, NXP also benefits from the comprehensive and expanding ARM ecosystem.

“The showcasing of ARM technology by NXP, is a highly visible demonstration of the growing momentum behind ARM Cortex processors in set-top boxes,” said Mike Inglis, executive vice president, Processor Division, ARM. “The combination of high-performance, low-power technology enables ARM to provide NXP with the scalable performance demanded by next-generation DVR & STB devices.”

Dedicated hardware for flexible content format decoding, alongside the ARM architecture optimizations for Javascript and Flash Player 10 components, ensures that the NXP PNX847x/8x/9x can deliver the most responsive and robust user experience for on-line VOD and other content delivered via the internet. In addition to the superb power efficiency, the PNX 847x/8x/9x family also features a 3D graphics processing unit to render advanced programming navigation user interfaces, games and other 3D content. The new NXP PNX847x/8x/9x is currently available in sample quantities.