Hyundai taps SPARC in MPEG-2 device bid

Electronic News, June 27, 1994 by Jim DeTar

SAN JOSE, CALIF.--Hyundai Electronics America will today reveal it has licensed Sun's microSPARC RISC technology core which it plans to use in a line of Motion Picture Experts Group level 2 (MPEG-2) decoder chips; the business will be handled by a Hyundai Digital Media division (HDM) chartered to design, develop and market low-cost, single-chip MPEG-2 decoder products.

The Hyundai/Sun deal is reminiscent of the recent disclosure by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. that it has begun incorporating the SPARC core into microcontroller products and plans other spins of SPARC-based MCUs, including possible integration of MPEG coding (EN, May 16). Industry observers said the choice of Sun's microSPARC by Hyundai puts it solidly in the race for a share of the emerging digital media market. Hyundai plans to begin sampling its MPEG-2 chips by year-end and ship them by the end of 2Q95.

Hyundai quietly formed the HDM division nearly a year ago, in July 1993. At that time, Jim Kirkpatrick--former VP of engineering at C-Cube--was picked by Hyundai Electronics Industries of Korea to head HDM, according to Vahe Akay, director of marketing and sales for HDM. "With the creation of HDM, we wanted to put a stake in the ground and let people know what we intended to do," Mr. Akay told Electronic News in an interview last week. "Jim started the process of product definition; R&D started when he took over. Today there are 30 people in the division and by year-end there will be 35. We have a worldwide responsibility. R&D will be done here. Marketing and sales will be done here. That's why I joined three months ago; there was no need for marketing until a certain point in product development."

Hyundai said HDM's first MPEG-2 product will be targeted at digital set-top boxes being designed to eventually provide access to up to 500 television channels and interactive two-way communications. HDM's products will also address a variety of other applications, including CD-ROM players and karaoke machines able to use the 15 megabit/sec. specified MPEG-2 speed.

This broad lineup of target applications is typical of companies using the SPARC core, which carries only a one-time licensing fee of $99, according to Dave Ditzel, chief scientist and director of SPARC Labs, Sun Microsystems SPARC Technology Business (STB). "When you incorporate MPEG-2 into SPARC, it fits together naturally."

Hyundai is an early SPARC adopter, having system products based on the SPARC platform in Korea and the U.S., but HDM is the first group in Hyundai to license the SPARC core. Hyundai said it has no plans for now to incorporate MPEG-2 into workstation products manufactured by its Axil Workstations subsidiary; HDM will instead focus on consumer markets.

"I don't think the workstation is ready to take MPEG-2 type decoders. It's too expensive of a system to play games on or watch movies on. A bigger market is set-top boxes and CD-ROM and karaoke machines," Mr. Akay said. "We have licensed the core and are using a subset of that core. We wanted to use a piece of the core that is enough to do the job and grow as functionality and performance increases and not make the die so large we have to go into expensive packages. Time-to-market was a concern. We had to use a core that already existed--that was proven technology and all the tools are known to function. Because the RISC core is a microcoded architecture, if Sun comes up with a next-generation processor, they are going to keep that instruction set. It's easier to modify our existing microcode and incorporate functionality."

Asked whether Sun could become a customer of Hyundai's MPEG-2 decoders in its workstations, Derek W. Meyer, Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. (SMCC) director of marketing, said it was too early to tell. "We will have to look at the results of the product to make a decision at that time."

Hyundai also is helping Sun to develop one of its next-generation technology products; it is on the executive committee for the UltraSPARC V9 due out later this year and targeted at multiprocessor systems (see page 2).

Richard Doherty, director of The Envisioneering Group, a market research & consulting firm, called Hyundai microSPARC selection "a brilliant choice for a company that has not had a long history in that market. Instead of dedicating an ASIC to MPEG, which is what C-Cube is doing and SGS-Thomson is doing, Hyundai will be able to just throw code at it and change it in a few lines of code. If there are any changes in MPEG, it could be a disaster to C-Cube. There are lots of single-chip MPEG-2 solutions. They can't all go through the doorway at the same time and none of them uses a SPARC core. This is a radically different method and makes sense for a company that is trying to make up on lost time."

In order to cover that ground, HDM is counting on access to the financial and other resources of its parent, Hyundai Electronics Industries, such as its large semiconductor manufacturing capacity for memories; systems with MPEG decoders will require between four and eight DRAMs. Said Mr. Akay, "The combination of engineering and manufacturing strengths enables us to design an MPEG-2 decoder device with a high level of integration, increased functionality and ease of design at an extremely competitive price. All indications so far show that we have a significant edge over our competition."