IDF 2009 (2): the CE4100 SoC

At IDF 2009 Intel Corporation unveiled the Atom CE4100, the newest System-on-Chip (SoC) in a family of media processors designed to bring Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players and advanced set-top boxes.

The CE4100 processor, formerly codenamed "Sodaville," is the first 45nm-manufactured consumer electronics (CE) SoC based on Intel architecture. It supports Internet and broadcast applications on one chip, and has the processing power and audio/video components necessary to run rich media applications such as 3-D graphics.

"The architecture of Intel media processors provides a powerful and innovative platform to showcase Flash-based applications in a vivid way," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. "Flash Player 10 combined with the performance of the Intel media processor and its support for standards such as OpenGL ES 2.0 offers a compelling environment for Flash-based games, videos and other rich Web content and applications." The companies expect Adobe Flash Player 10 to be available in the first half of 2010 for Intel media processor-based CE devices.

Intel CE media processors provide a full-featured software framework called Widget Channel for the development of Internet applications, or TV widgets. Broadcast networks such as CBS are expanding the gallery of TV widgets to help their viewers find and connect to premium content in a more personalized manner.

See the full press release.

IDF 2009

The Intel Developer Forum has been held in San Francisco between September 22 and 24, 2009. All the Keynote and Briefing presentations are available at the IDF Pressroom. Here is the full program.

Day 1

• Keynote: Paul Otellini - Building a Continuum of Computing
• Keynote: Sean Maloney - Intel® Architecture Innovates and Integrates
• Briefing: Steve Smith - Intel Roadmap Overview
• Briefing: Mark Bohr - 22 nm SRAM Announcement

Day 2

• Keynote: Dadi Perlmutter - Mobile Computing: The Definition of Cool
• Keynote: Renee James - Developing for the Continuum of Intel Platforms
• Briefing: Mooly Eden - Revolutionary, Intelligent Intel® Core™ i7 Processors - Coming Soon to a Laptop Near You

Day 3

• Keynote: Eric Kim - The Architecture of CE Innovation
• Keynote: Justin Rattner - Convergence is So Yesterday: The Future of Television

SVC honored by IEEE

The prestigious journal IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology awarded Heiko Schwarz, Detlev Marpe and Thomas Wiegand, of Fraunhofer HHI and the TU Berlin, the Best Paper Award for the most outstanding paper of the past two years in recognition of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of the H.264/AVC video coding standard.

The jury made special mention of the fact that the scientific work of the researchers was not merely documented in published papers but already in use by such leading companies as Cisco, Google and Hitachi.

The paper "Overview of the Scalable Video Coding Extension of the H.264/AVC Standard" is available here.

BDA on 3D

The Blu-Ray Disc Association announced it will complete the specs of 3D BD by the end of this year, followed by studios launching their first 3D discs in 2010.

BDA members made some decisions this week, notably regarding backward-compatibility requirements. Any produced 3D discs will include a 2D version of the film that can be viewed with existing Blu-ray Disc players. Additionally, 3D-capable Blu-ray players must be able to run existing 2D titles.

Coinciding with BDA’s 3D developments, Sony laid out plans for a 2010 line of stereoscopic 3D-enabled products, whereas Panasonic has already committed to its own line of advanced 3D TVs and Blu-ray players, also set to bow in 2010.

Source: Video Business.

Android goes HD

MIPS Technologies and Sigma Designs jointly developed an Android-based system displaying 1080p video on a full HD flat screen display. This HD video demonstration is a major milestone toward the creation of a reference platform for an Android-based set-top box, a goal that Sigma and MIPS have been jointly working toward with other members of the STB working group of the Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF).

Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing, Sigma Designs, declared "Support for Android is a priority on Sigma's roadmap as we enable our customers to quickly, easily and cost-effectively bring exciting new functionality to their next-generation of connected devices including DTVs, STBs and Blu-ray players."

The code is publicly available at www.mips.com/android.

Inexpensive OLED

Using a new double solvent approach, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Intellectual Property Strategies are able to create a better and less expensive OLED screen. Rather than using spin coated films as before, the dual-solvent concept makes electrospray-deposited films smoother than before. “Using this technology these devices could be manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers”, says Yutaka Yamagata.

Yamagata also notes that: “The advantage of using electrospray deposition is that we can fabricate both smooth films and nanostructured film using the same technology.” In the future he believes that this advantage “will also be useful in controlling the structure of organic semiconductor junctions for organic solar cells.”