COVER FEATURE Using DaVinci Technology for Digital Video Devices Deepu Talla and Jeremiah Golston Texas Instruments It’s not practical for one SoC processor to fit all equipment and meet today’s aggressive performance,power,and cost targets.The DaVinci integrated portfolio of processors, software,and tools offers support for developing a broad spectrum of optimized digital video equipment. eveloping innovative and cost-efficient digital schemes. Target system bill-of-materials and equipment video products requires systems that encom- form factor drive the level of system integration, includ- pass open and flexible system-on-chip (SoC) ing analog, storage, connectivity, and packaging. processors, software, and development tools. Product life-cycle and operating conditions drive design D Manufacturers ship billions of DV products methodologies such as process selection, testing, ability each year, including portable media players, digital to quickly spin a follow-on device, and optimizations media adaptors, IPTV set-top boxes (STBs), digital cam- such as speed and power binning. And finally, time to eras, solid-state video recorders, multimedia camera market drives deployment collateral such as software, phones, digital TVs, automotive infotainment, video tools, and reference designs. security equipment, IP network cameras, and network For the past decade, SoC technology has been the pri- video for emerging applications. mary answer for the DV market. SoCs typically have Many of these products have processor requirements multiple processors, programmable engines and accel- similar to today’s PCs, but their power and cost metrics erators, fixed-function hardware, peripheral interfaces, are an order of magnitude apart. and analog components, all integrated in the same piece of silicon to address the need for high performance, low CHANGING NEEDS power, and low system cost. A majority of these SoCs Devices have a variety of uses and price points, are based on closed architectures, giving developers few depending on computing strategies, level of integration, implementation options. and design methodologies. For instance, the need for a However, increasingly complex DV applications require high-level operating system such as Linux or Windows design flexibility for greater customization and advanced CE typically drives selection of a general-purpose proces- feature updates. Manufacturers often must use the same sor. The extent of programmability, field upgradability, system platform across a range of products for specific feature future-proofing, and need for universal video markets, or combine different applications in the same decoding or a closed system drive selection of digital sig- system, such as a security camera with object recognition, nal processors (DSPs), programmable accelerators, and or an IPTV STB with an integrated videophone. As man- fixed-function hardware. ufacturers produce more feature-rich, multiple-applica- Whether the device is portable or wall-plugged tion products, developers increasingly need SoC proces- or must be in always-on mode drives the selection sors designed with open architectures to meet the mar- of process technology, power domains, and clocking ket’s versatile, rapidly changing requirements. 0018-9162/07/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society October 2007 53 Speaker Stereo Mic in headphones L LED Stereo audio backlight L LCD panel line in R Stereo audio Stereo audio R line out L codec FM radio IC R Touch screen LCD interface IR remote controller Keypad RTC control Serial interface CCIR-656 bus (I2C, SPI, I2S) Video Video in decoder MPU Video buffer Lens NTSC/PAL CCD/ CCD CMOS analog sensors RS232 front end Clock DM6441 RS485 USB HDD Buffer DDR2 Battery power SD/MMC/ management MS interface Compact Flash flash adapter memory JTAG Legend Processor Primary LED backlight LCD DSP/CPU core I/O Interface supply supply supply supply supply Amplifier DC/DC DC/DC DC/DC Logic System Supply Integrated boost boost buck LDO power voltage power Power converter converter converter supervisor management ADC/DAC Other Power management Figure 1.Portable media player system block diagram.The ability to decode multiple standards and resolutions at very low power is a key feature given the wide variety of content sources.Processor flexibility is therefore extremely important. DAVINCI TECHNOLOGY grammable and fixed-function video and imaging co- It’s not practical for one SoC to fit all equipment and processors are available to accelerate key algorithms. meet today’s aggressive performance, power, and cost Video and imaging content-creation equipment, such as targets. The DaVinci integrated processor portfolio digital and video-security cameras and multimedia cam- offers software, tools, and support for developing a era phones, require flexible image signal-processing blocks broad spectrum of optimized DV equipment (http:// for processing raw video and image data from charge-cou- ti.com/corp/docs/landing/davinci/index.html). DaVinci pled device/complementary metal-oxide semiconductor processors are optimized to match price, performance, (CCD/CMOS) sensors. and feature requirements for specific DV equipment. Display-processing IP can range from 2D onscreen display plus a standard-definition (SD) video encoder DSP processors and LCD controller to a high-definition TV (HDTV) DaVinci uses scalable and programmable DSP-based back-end processor that contains advanced video- media processors, including ARM and DSP-centric processing techniques for deinterlacing, color repro- SoCs with accelerators and peripherals. Designers can duction, and enhancement. use the range of flexible IP blocks to tailor a SoC to meet the target video-equipment requirements. A gen- Other attributes eral-purpose processor is needed in equipment that Sourcing and synching data to the various processing either has a high-level operating system or a significant elements on the SoC requires a flexible, scalable, and amount of system and control code. DaVinci proces- powerful direct-memory access engine coupled with an sors use a selection of ARM-based general-purpose efficient dynamic RAM controller merged with innov- processor solutions. ative bus architectures and topologies. Analog IP such The system needs DSPs to implement flexible video- and as USB 2.0 and video and audio components are keys to image-processing tasks. An integrated TMS320C64x+ low system cost and small form factors. Furthermore, DSP core achieves this functionality. Furthermore, pro- peripherals such as card and memory interfaces, security 54 Computer BT_656, Y/C, Video-imaging raw (Bayer) JTAG interface coprocessor System control ARM subsystem DSP subsystem Video processing subsystem Input PLLs/clock ARM926EJ-S CPU 64x+ DSP CPU Front end Back end 8b BT_656, Y/C, clock(s) generator 24b RGB 16 Kbyte 8 Kbyte 64 Kbyte L2 RAM Resizer CCD NTSC/ Power/sleep I-cache D-cache Onscreen Video 10b DAC controller Histogram/ PAL, controller 32 Kbyte 80 Kbyte display encoder 10b DAC 16 Kbyte RAM L1 data L1 data video 3A S-Video, 10b DAC RGB, Pin interface Preview multiplexing 16 Kbyte RAM 10b DAC YPbPr Switched central resource Peripherals Serial interfaces System Audio General- EDMA serial I2C SPI Watchdog purpose port UART timer PWM timer Connectivity Program/data storage USB 2.0 EMAC DDR2 Async EMIF/ ATA/ MMC/ PHY VLYNQ with HPI mem ctlr NAND/ compact SD/ MDIO (16b/32b) smart media flash SDIO Figure 2.DM6441 block diagram.High integration of key functions,analog,and peripherals requires fewer external components, leading to a low system bill-of-materials cost and a better form factor. IP, networking interfaces, and communication ports are decode multiple standards and resolutions at very low integrated into the SoC. power is a key feature given the wide variety of content DaVinci software includes configurable frameworks sources. Processor flexibility is therefore extremely that popular operating systems present via published important. APIs for rapid software implementation with DaVinci A TV, DVD player, or STB can provide the recording processors. The software framework abstracts the source. The encoding video and audio standard is typi- processor’s inner workings and dramatically reduces cally fixed to one standard. Many portable media play- research and development, system architecture, imple- ers can capture images and video as well, requiring an mentation, and test requirements. The system also deliv- integrated ISP for low system cost. The player’s display ers standard video, imaging, audio, and speech codecs ports can be a combination of SDTV, LCD, and HDTV. along with the processor. These include standards such A rich and user-friendly GUI is common. Recently, as H.264, MPEG-2 and -4, Windows Media Video 9 high-end players have additional functions such as 3D (WMV 9), JPEG, Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, G.7xx, graphics, navigation capabilities, and terrestrial and and other popular formats. mobile broadcast reception. Developers must implement The DaVinci technology portfolio includes several oper- all these features at a very low power and system cost to ating system ports appropriate for different applications, enable mass-market success. including open source Linux and real-time operating sys- tems for specific equipment. Developers need a full set of Dual-core architecture cost-appropriate tools and kits for a variety of application The TMS320DM6441 DaVinci processor was devel- spaces and designs, including low-cost starter tools, com- oped to address the portable media