NEC and Telecom Design team up to offer Softmodem for Digital TV silicon solutions

IBC, Amsterdam, September 13 2002 - NEC and Telecom Design are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Telecom Design's V.22bis softmodem solution on NEC's second generation silicon solutions for digital TV, EMMArchitecture2 and EMMArchitecture2L. The solution, accompanied with V.42 and V.42bis enhancements, is aimed at dramatically reducing Digital TV receiver costs, making it ideal for digital converter boxes and solution cost downs.

NEC's EMMArchitecture2, high-end solution for PVR, and EMMArchitecture2L, low cost solution for converter boxes and standard DTV receivers, were designed with support for softmodem. Both solutions tout a very high performance (over 200 dhrystone MIPS) processor, leaving the CPU a lot of margin to handle the modem alongside standard DTV applications. Softmodem to an external codec is also available. Telecom Design's Softmodem interface is a well proven design already used by major set top box manufacturers, combining V.22, V.23 with Turn Around, V.42 Error Correction and V.42bis Software Compression, designed to complement standard external DAA devices. The softmodem is ideal for handling user management and low speed return path to the broadcaster.

"As NEC's EMMArchitecture2 and EMMArchitecture2L become widely adopted as cost reduction of legacy implementations, it made sense for us to look at using a softmodem for further improving our customer's overall system cost," said Colin Smith, NEC's Multimedia Applications Centre Manager, NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, UK branch. "Telecom Design's solution will bring these benefits with a plug-in industry proven design, greatly enhancing our system offering."

"The cooperation of Telecom Design with NEC is targeted at offering a full solution support to box designers," said Philippe Maté, Telecom Design's Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing. "Whilst we will offer a ready-to-use solution which has been validated, our partnership will allow box makers to easily access our support teams, for additional custom designs and consulting help. We are thrilled at the prospects that we are opening to our customers this way."

EMMArchitecture2 (NEC part number µPD61130) was designed with flexibility in mind. Sporting a 200MIPS CPU, a 3 Transport Streams demultiplexer, IDE support for HDD and DVD, a PCI interface to standard external peripherals, dual MPEG stream decoding, and CCIR656 input, it is designed to handled PVR solutions, MHP up to at least profile 1.1, and iDTV amongst the most popular solutions. EMMArchitecture2L (NEC Part Number µPD61120) also sports a 200 MIPS processor, but with only 1 Transport Stream demultiplexer, 1 video and audio decoder and 1 smartcard interface, it is squarely aimed at low cost set top box solutions, including DTV converters, and MHP up to profile 1.0.2.

Telecom Design offers embedded communication solutions for modem from V.22 bis to V.92, ISDN and LAN accessin various technologies: standalone, controllerless up to full software. The solutions dedicated to the set top box market are available from complete modules, reference design packages all the way to full support and consultancy from the design up to the production phases.

The Telecom Design V.22 bis software modem solution implemented on NEC's EMMArchitecture platform is designed in a flexible manner that allows it to be interfaced to various CODEC and DAA front ends, which empowers system designers to select the most cost effective solution for their own V.22 bis.

The architecture is highly integrated and optimised for very low power, small footprint and very low cost applications. As it requires no additional external memory, and only little processing power from the host CPU, while providing great flexibility in its use, the V.22 bis full software solution from Telecom Design on NEC's EMMArchitecture2 is ideal for any Set Top Box and Digital TV solution that requires a world class international data modem solution at the best cost.

NEC and Telecom Design expect the full design to be available to customers in Q4 2002.

About NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH
NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, headquartered in Duesseldorf, Germany, is a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of semiconductor products in Europe. Committed to meeting customers' cost, performance and time-to-market requirements, the company offers solutions ranging from standard products to system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, as well as customized products for next-generation designs. NEC Electronics also offers customers the benefit of state-of-the-art manufacturing locally in Europe, besides the global production of its parent company, NEC Corporation. For more information visit www.ee.nec.de.

About Telecom Design
Telecom Design is specialised in the design and manufacturing of analog and digital data transmission solutions especially designed for the Non PC market. Part of the INS group, Telecom Design has already acquired a reputation as a fast developing player on its market, confirming forecasts of continued growth.

Telecom Design provides its customers with state-of-the-art technologies as well as providing an offer that complies with the main industrial constraints. In addition to its own technologies, Telecom Design is a key marketing and technology partner for a major telecom technology provider: LUCENT Microelectronics Group (Agere). This partnership ensures that Telecom Design's customers will have access to strong and innovative solutions based on worldwide-accepted standards with a high-level quality commitment.