C-Cube Eyes Front-end DVD Chips

Electronic News, Oct 23, 2000 by Steven Fyffe

Next-generation chipset to take over front-end functions

C-Cube Microsystems Inc. last week moved a step closer to attacking the analog front-end market and continued down the road to integration with the release of its ZiVA-5 chip for DVD players.

The latest chip from the Milpitas, Calif.-based company takes over the tasks of several peripheral chips that control DVD audio and progressive-scan video support functions. The ZiVa-5 also features a 32-bit SPARC microprocessor from Sun Microsystems Inc. and a built-in dual-audio DSP architecture that adds MP3 audio codec capabilities to the mix.

C-Cube next plans to absorb the front-end controller and chipset with its forthcoming ZiVA-6 chip, in a move that threatens to steal market share from Cirrus Logic Inc., Phillips Semiconductor, Oak Technology Inc. and LSI Logic Corp., according to Xavier Pucel, manager of semiconductor research at International Data Corp. (IDC), Mountain View, Calif.

"Right now they are integrating their own silicon," Pucel said. "But when they integrate the front-end, they are taking away the business of the front-end guys. All of a sudden they are integrating somebody else's silicon."

Other analysts said integration was the best way to bring the silicon cost down, while incorporating the extra features needed to transform DVD players into home gateways for the delivery of digital content.

C-Cube has succeeded in building some attractive new functions into the ZiVA-5, especially the MP3 capabilities, said Scott Hudson, an analyst at IDC.

"It seems they are making all the right moves," Hudson said. "I certainly think that it is an extremely viable market. I don't think these issues with Napster are really going to slow down the market at all. People now are starting to get used to downloading music and listening to it. There is probably some successful business model where people would pay a subscription fee and then pay per download."

With MP3 and DVD audio, the ZiVA-5 is poised to usher in a new era of personalized digital media, according to Timothy Vehling, director of marketing for consumer products at C-Cube.

"You can take a DVD encoder and rip that code to an integrated hard disk or flash memory," Vehling said. "Up until this point, MP3 had been a PC technology. This brings that personalization of music into the living room."

A large part of C-Cube's business has been built around piracy-friendly Video CD technology that has been very popular in Asia. C-Cube has integrated a copy protection-for-prerecorded-media chip into the ZiVA-5 and included audio watermark detection in an effort to thwart would-be MP3 pirates.

The ZiVA-5 is packaged in a 208-pin PQFP and comes in two flavors: ZiVA-5X that includes DVD audio, progressive scan and MP3 audio and the mainstream ZiVA-5M, which does not. Samples will be available the fourth quarter, with volume shipments planned for the first half of 2001. In volume quantities, ZiVA-5X is priced at $22.50 and ZiVA-5M is priced at $16.50.