IBM for ITV

Electronic News, April 19, 1999

IBM Corp. today introduced a digital television set-top box device that combines numerous components onto a single piece of silicon. The integration is designed to provide a simple and inexpensive means for allowing cable and satellite companies to implement interactive digital television (ITV), telephone services and Internet access.

The chip combines both computer components and Internet access components to enable consumers to surf the web or access data services through a normal television. The chip combines a PowerPC 401engine, MPEG audio and video decode systems, on-board caches, on-chip memory and other peripheral units such as IEEE-1394, I2C and smart card interfaces on a single chip. IBM said more than 30 cores from its library are used in the chip. IBM will be demonstrating the single chip ITV set-top box offering at NAB '99 this week.