Low-cost SoC for digital radio and terrestrial TV markets

Low-cost SoC for digital radio and terrestrial TV markets
By Nolan Fell, EE Times UK
January 21, 2002 (6:36 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020118S0012

UK start-up Frontier Silicon is to develop and launch low-cost system-on-chip (SoC) products for the digital radio and terrestrial TV markets.

The company, led by Anthony Sethill, a former Amstrad and ONdigital executive, has secured funding from a number of venture capital companies. It has licensed Imagination Technologies' MPEG decoder technology and Meta processor architecture, part-paying for the IP with shares.

Sethill, CEO, says the company's first digital radio chip, Frontier Chorus, will be available in March, with digital TV silicon being launched later in the year.

He says Frontier will keep its product cost low by taking advantage of overlaps in the chips architecture for the radio and TV markets.

"If you look at the core technology in the digital radio chip and bring it together with MPEG2, you have a complete DVB-T [digital video broadcast — terrestrial] system on a single chip" said Sethill.

Digital rad io has stalled in the UK but Frontier believes the market will take off once products are available at a reasonable price.