Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
Michael (Micksa) Slade wrote:
Look for a chip labelled "xilinx" or "altera".
Regardless, I would guess that the decoding hardware in the ASIC(s) is
designed to be flexible enough to be usable with newer technologies,
provided they fit a certain profile. For example, IIRC mpeg1, mpeg2,
mpeg4 and theora are all based on DCTs and probably have a few other
things in common, so these sub-processes would likely be doable in
silicon, leaving the software with the less CPU-intensiive stuff, and
putting it all together. This is assuming, of course, that the guys at
Sigma know what they are doing.
Erik, please feel free to enlighten me if I'm guessing wrong :)
Without actually inspecting the thing myself, I would ask myself
why have an ASIC and an FPGA instead of just having an FPGA?
Maybe they can put an FPGA on there that can achieve the same
performance and functionality as the Sigma chipset (you would know that
better than me), but I reckon there are plenty of cost concerns. For
example, would an FPGA actually be any cheaper than an ASIC? Also
there's the development cost, which for Zensonic would probably be a
big factor as evidence suggests that they're not a big company.
How fast can an FPGA go these days?
Mick.
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