Display / networking requirements soar, smart TV chip multi-core competition

Smart TV chips are moving towards multi-core design. As a new generation of smart TVs will support higher-level operating systems and add naked-eye 3D, 4K & TImes; 2K display and somatosensory, voice control and other advanced human-machine interface functions, the demand for processor performance has rapidly increased, driving TV chip vendors and application processing Manufacturers are rushing to invest in multi-core solutions.

The smart TV (Smart TV) army debuted one after another this year, expanding its momentum. Among them, Samsung (Samsung), LG (LG) and Sony (Sony) take the high-end route, focusing on full high-definition (FHD), three-dimensional (3D) display, and have a variety of advanced human-machine interface and other dazzling specifications, and betting A large number of software R & D resources have planted audiovisual content and applications.

Coincidentally, in order to speed up the TV replacement cycle of an average of 7 years, manufacturers in Taiwan and China have also actively invested in smart TV research and development, and they are aggressively attacking models equipped with Android operating systems. At present, the six major TV brand manufacturers in mainland China and Lenovo, a major laptop manufacturer, have launched Android 2.2 / 2.3 or 4.0 smart TVs. Next year, they will focus on new models of Android 4.0 or 4.1 and introduce more applications and software functions; At the same time, it will also upgrade the system processor clock specifications and increase the naked-eye three-dimensional 3D, 4K & TImes; 2K display, thereby improving the networking and video experience, and inspiring consumers in China's first and second-tier cities to switch.

In fact, mainland China's TV shipments have caught up with North America and become the world's major TV consumer market; under the influence of local brand factories, it is likely to inject huge growth momentum for the development of smart TV. As shown in Figure 1, the second quarter of this year, the shipment of smart TV in mainland China is unique, far ahead of Europe, America and Japan.

Figure 1 Statistics of shipments and penetration rates of smart TVs by region in the second quarter of 2012

However, due to the fierce competition in the mainland China market, brand manufacturers are committed to expanding their functions. At the same time, they must also respond to the development trend of MulTI-screen video streaming and enhance the wireless local area network (Wi-Fi) transmission rate. Chip (SoC) performance is stretched.

Optimized networking / video processing dual-core CPU / GPU as standard

In order to fully optimize the design of smart TV functions, chip manufacturers have launched multi-core central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPUs) in response to the design (Table 1), and mass production will continue in 2013 to help brand factories improve graphics processing And web browsing performance. Dai Hongjun, senior industry analyst at MIC, said that in addition to actively expanding the lineup of smart TV products next year, TV brand factories will also consider adding new naked-eye 3D, 4K & TImes; 2K features as the layout focus. Among them, Japanese and Korean manufacturers have begun to equip high-end models with 4K × 2K panels; and six major brands in mainland China have swarmed to introduce naked-eye 3D in mid- to high-end models, with a view to combining advanced display functions with strategies to enhance wisdom TV sales in North America, Europe and China.

In addition, smart TV functions are complex, so Samsung, LG, and Sony are also committed to developing more intuitive human-machine interfaces such as mobile device control, voice control, and gesture operation. In response to the comprehensive upgrade plan for smart TV specifications, TV chip vendors, application processor developers and chip brand R & D departments of TV brands are stepping up their investment in multi-core SoC designs.

Dai Hongjun believes that the multi-core processor of smart TV will be unveiled next year. The basic specifications include upgrading the CPU to dual-core and clock frequency of 1.2GHz to meet the needs of high-speed network browsing and multiple human-machine interface signal processing; and the GPU is also expected to step forward. To dual-core level, it provides more powerful graphics processing performance of the video codec engine, making 3D and 4K × 2K content playback smoother.

Generally speaking, the smart TV SoC includes two major blocks: network processing and video encoding and decoding. The network processing part is biased towards the application processor functions of mobile devices, responsible for web browsing, digital processing, and execution of application programs. As for video encoding and decoding, it is mainly based on the H.264 image processing engine, with algorithms that comply with national broadcast signal standards. For smooth video encoding and decoding operations.

Dai Hongjun analyzed that due to the more complex operating system architecture of smart TVs, coupled with panel resolution and human-machine interface upgrades, it takes up more SoC performance; therefore, the dual-core CPU and dual-core GPU SoC solution will gradually become the standard for the new generation of smart TVs. Assist brand factories to optimize the experience of networking and video streaming.

Lock down Android 4.0 smart TV chip maker to compete for dual-core processors

Following Morningstar ’s industry ’s first Android 4.0 smart TV dual-core SoC, which has won the favor of mainland Chinese players such as TCL, other TV main chip developers have also begun to follow up, including SiS, Novatek, Realtek and STMicroelectronics (ST ) In order to compete for orders from brand manufacturers, they are all stepping up their R & D speed, and it is expected that they will complete their dual-core chip lineup in 2013.

Among them, SiS is expected to release its first dual-core solution in the first quarter of 2013, and mass production will be in the second quarter, with a view to enhancing business performance and video encoding and decoding capabilities to seize business opportunities in the smart TV market.

Figure 2 Li Minhan, director of the second marketing department of the first marketing department of SiS Technology, mentioned that in addition to Android 4.0 smart TVs, mainland Chinese companies have also begun to study the feasibility of developing Windows 8 smart TVs.

Li Minhan (Figure 2), the second director of the technology marketing department of SiS Technology Marketing, said that local TV brands in mainland China, Taiwan, Australia and India will compete for Android 4.0 smart TVs from the end of this year to inject new growth into the market kinetic energy. Since the Android 4.0 operating system defines memory to support at least 1GB and stricter requirements for GPU specifications, chip manufacturers are encouraged to develop dual-core CPUs and dual-core GPU solutions to enhance the performance of software and hardware cooperative operations.

Li Minhan pointed out that as TV brands continue to upgrade their products to Android 4.0 and strive to deploy exclusive interfaces and cloud services, it will increase system complexity and consume more processor performance. It is expected that from 2013, the 1GHz dual-core SoC will become the standard for smart TVs, and even some high-end models will introduce naked-eye 3D, 4K × 2K panels or advanced human-machine interfaces to show differentiated characteristics, and will adopt a four-core solution.

It is understood that SiS has gained a lot in the smart TV market this year. Its Android 2.2 smart TV SoC, SiS 691, has successfully entered the supply chain of TV brands such as BenQ in Taiwan, Soniq in Australia and BOE in Mainland China. In addition to the aforementioned manufacturers, LCD TV manufacturers including Chimei, Helian, etc. have also actively approached SiS to set up a next-generation Android 4.0 smart TV cooperative development plan.

Li Minhan emphasized that in addition to supporting Android 4.0 next year, the SiS dual-core SoC can also enhance naked-eye 3D and high-resolution image processing through an external frame rate conversion (FRC) chip. At the same time, it will also improve the chip firmware control function and force the global digital TV standard common platform to comply with European digital video broadcasting (DVB), American Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) and Japan Integrated Digital Service Broadcast (ISDB) and other specifications, Help customers tailor products according to different regional market needs.

On the other hand, with Android 4.0 and Windows 8 operating systems emphasizing multi-screen audio and video streaming on mobile phones, tablets, and TVs, smart TV SoCs must also increase the clock, video codec conversion, while maintaining low cost. The Miracast wireless display and information security protection mechanism has attracted more development challenges.

Satisfy smart TV application MIPS sacrifice six core processor IP

To this end, MIPS has created a six-core silicon intellectual property (IP) design and complete Android development tools. Kevin Kitagawa, director of strategic marketing at Maples, said that the Android platform has become across smartphones, tablet devices, and digital TVs. Because no licensing fees are required, acceptance is increasing; especially the Chinese mainland TV brand factory is fully committed to Android smart TV development In addition, the development of multi-screen audio and video streaming for smarter homes has greatly increased. Therefore, in the future, smart TV SoCs must provide highly integrated multi-screen streaming solutions to enable closer interaction between mobile phones, tablets, and TVs.

Locking in this trend, MIPS has recently been the first to launch a proAptiv solution that supports a six-core design, with the top performance of the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Association (EEMBC) certification exceeding 4.5 CoreMark / MHz, which will meet the complete design requirements of next-generation smart TVs.

However, the Android platform promotes the formation of multi-screen streaming applications, and ARM has also quickly spread to the TV field by virtue of its core reputation in the mobile market; including TV chip vendors such as Morningstar, STMicroelectronics and SiS, and Qualcomm (Qualcomm) ), Marvell (Marvell) and other application processor manufacturers have successively invested in ARM core smart TV processor design, leading to the MIPS, which previously had a large layout in the digital TV chip market, is facing a crisis of market share loss.

In this regard, Kitagawa believes that the MIPS core can provide better performance than competitors, and competition in the smart TV market will not be disadvantaged. The DMIPS / MHz performance of the new proAptiv is comparable to ARM's highest-end Cortex-A15, but it can be achieved with only half the grain size and 50% higher performance than Cortex-A9. In particular, MIPS 'Android development tools and compatibility test suites have been supported by Google. Compared with ARM solutions, it still takes time to optimize the coordination of software and hardware, which will have the advantage of accelerating the development time of the chip.

Kitagawa also expects that many SoC vendors who have failed to obtain sufficient Android and ARM core design resources will step up the use of MIPS core development products to provide the same or better processing performance at a better price, and form a difference with the ARM core camp. Change. At present, all major TV brands in the world plan to use MIPS architecture SoC to develop smart TVs, including Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Hisense and Samsung, etc., have begun to import MIPS cores or are closely researching and designing, so that terminal products can Quickly penetrate into the home entertainment market at a low price.

Kitagawa emphasized that in the next few years, smart TVs will be upgraded to support four times the high-definition 4K × 2K resolution, next-generation H.265 video codec standards, while also improving high-speed wireless networking capabilities and optimizing cloud access response speed , And then combined with home monitoring and environmental control systems. Therefore, MIPS has also launched the core deployment of a new generation of TV SoC. In addition to better video processing and streaming performance, it will also include encoding functions that can be transcoded in real time to quickly transmit TV content to mobile devices and accelerate Realize a new experience of video link from large screen to small screen.

The future of the smart TV market is promising. In addition to the development of multi-core solutions for existing TV chips and IP vendors, it also attracts major manufacturers of application processors such as Qualcomm and Maywell to actively take advantage of existing technologies. It is expected to borrow a series of IC take-all mobile device, TV and set-top box business opportunities, will be backed by the mass production economic scale, and strongly challenge the market position of TV SoC vendors, which may trigger new changes in the TV chip industry.

Carpool Smart TV SoC Qualcomm / Maywell AP is coming

As the development trajectory of smart TVs and mobile devices is getting closer and closer, it also attracts application processor vendors to grab a piece of the cake.

Among them, Qualcomm and Maywell are splitting up to attack smart TV and IP set-top box. The former has cooperated with Lenovo to develop high-end smart TV-K91 through the quad-core Snapdragon S4 chip; the latter has scored In addition to the Google TV 2.0 supply chain, we also cooperated with Wistron to develop set-top boxes, and recently obtained cooperation opportunities with Lenovo S series Android smart TVs. This shows that mobile processor companies are rapidly emerging in the TV market.

Figure 3 Michele Evans Reitz, a senior analyst at the Gartner Semiconductor and Electronics Industry Device Research Department, mentioned that at present, except Qualcomm and Maywell, there are no other application processor vendors that have entered the field of smart TV.

Gartner semiconductor and electronics industry device research department senior analyst Michele Evans Reitz (Figure 3) analyzed that the initial application processor industry has not yet integrated the video codec (Decoder), so it is impossible to achieve a single smart TV SoC solution, the cost is difficult Compared with TV SoC vendors such as MediaTek and Morningstar. However, as the demand for smart TV processors with dual-core and above levels becomes more intense with TV brand manufacturers, application processor manufacturers are bound to develop in this direction and enter the field with ICs of the same series and different levels; in this way, not only can they It saves the cost of software and hardware research and development, and can also make the cost performance of the application processor with the video codec comparable to or even ahead of the SoC integration solution through a volume-based pricing strategy.

Reitz emphasized that the TV market has reached a mature stage, and it is difficult to show amazing shipment performance. In the future, the main growth driver of the entire consumer electronics market will come from smartphones and tablet devices, which will jointly affect the entire The layout of the semiconductor industry.

For example, since the cost of chips is inversely proportional to the sales volume, mobile device processor developers can use the huge demand of mobile devices as a backing to further follow the design and develop products suitable for TVs. On the one hand, they complement the product lineup. On the one hand, it can take advantage of economic scale and attract TV brands that strictly control the bill of materials (BOM) cost.

At the same time, under the influence of the six major brand factories in mainland China, the trend of smart TVs equipped with Android operating systems is more clear, which also helps the application processor industry to grow stronger. Reitz believes that Qualcomm and Maywell are quite skilled in the design of ARM-based hardware and Android software platforms, which will speed up the launch of their Android smart TV chips; in contrast, TV SoC manufacturers must invest time to optimize Android system operations Performance, even after a hundred battles in the TV market, it does not necessarily take advantage.

According to Gartner's definition, as long as the TV with wired or wireless networking capability can be called smart TV, it is estimated that the penetration rate of such products in the overall TV market will reach 50% in 2013, and it will leap into the mainstream position; and smart TV The output value of ASSP chips will rapidly increase from approximately US $ 1.1 billion in 2012 to approximately US $ 3.1 billion in 2016, reaching nearly triple growth.

Therefore, Reitz analyzed that under the growing market opportunities, the application processor industry will be able to successfully occupy a place in the field of smart TV. In particular, in order to accelerate the replacement cycle of traditional TVs for an average of about 7 years, brand manufacturers have stepped up to push smart TVs, which will also bring more revenue growth opportunities for related semiconductor manufacturers.

In view of the tight cost of TV systems, mobile chip vendors have sacrificed strategies for improving mobile phones and tablet processors into TV application solutions to seize business opportunities in smart TVs; to prevent new competitors from becoming more powerful, existing TV chip vendors--meaning France Semiconductor also proposed counterattacks for the design of general-purpose processors for TVs, set-top boxes, mobile phones and automobiles, and will reverse penetration of TV SoCs into various consumer electronics and embedded applications. On the one hand, by expanding the economic scale of mass production, TV chips The price is closer to the people; on the other hand, it can also open up a mobile market with larger shipments.

It is reported that STMicroelectronics has recently completed a dual-core series of chips across smart TVs and set-top boxes, which greatly reduces design complexity and cost. It will be mass-produced in the fourth quarter of this year and take advantage of two market opportunities.

All-in-one smart TV / STB STMicroelectronics general-purpose processor works

Figure 4 Chen Xicheng, STMicroelectronics ’digital TV and consumer electronics marketing manager, emphasized that in the future, ST ’s general-purpose processors will be incorporated into mobile phone and automotive electronic application functions to expand the application landscape.

According to Chen Xicheng (Figure 4), digital TV and consumer electronics marketing manager of STMicroelectronics, multimedia devices have rushed to take advantage of the Android operating system and the core of the ARM architecture, so that the common design of the main processor has surged; to effectively use resources for hardware and software development, reduce With repeated investment costs, STMicroelectronics is actively integrating its various multimedia device IC design departments with the aim of creating a general-purpose processor with high performance, simple architecture, power saving, small size and low cost.

Since expanding cooperation with the ST-Ericsson application processor division in April of this year, STMicroelectronics is continuously advancing the design of common hardware and software platforms for mobile phones, TVs, set-top boxes and automotive electronic devices. The first wave of products has been locked in smart TVs and on-board For box applications, Orly and Newman series dual-core processors with Cortex-A9 core will be released respectively, and mass production will be planned in the fourth quarter of this year and the second quarter of next year.

Chen Xicheng added that Orly and Newman have the same hardware and software design with a clock speed of 1.5GHz and support Android 4.0 operating system, full high-definition and 3D display; however, the signal output interface will be different according to the needs of set-top boxes and smart TV applications The former supports high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), while the latter connects to liquid crystal display (LCD) driver ICs through low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS). Because the layout of the two chips is mostly the same, only a slight modification of the design is needed to meet the needs of different applications, greatly reducing manufacturing costs and time.

At a time when global prosperity is unclear and TV brand manufacturers have successively fallen into the Maori defense battle, Chen Xicheng expects that general-purpose processors will gain a better strategic position in the Internet-connected TV boom due to their wide application range, strong performance, and affordable prices. And favored by manufacturers of set-top boxes.

In fact, the requirements for smart TVs on content security management mechanisms have become more stringent, and the design differences between TVs and set-top box chips have been greatly reduced. Chen Xicheng analyzed that in the past, set-top box suppliers focused on the digital copyright management (DRM) mechanism to prevent the content from being cracked and incurred losses; traditional TVs tended to value the encoding and decoding capabilities, and the requirements were very different. However, with the addition of VOD services to smart TVs, content providers have also begun to attach importance to codec management to establish a complete payment mechanism, which has led to the rise of general-purpose processors that are compatible with the features of TVs and set-top boxes.

In the future, STMicroelectronics will plan to build a FRC chip, Lotus, next year, in addition to using general-purpose processors in the smart TV and set-top box markets. This solution, coupled with the Newman processor, can increase the refresh rate of the smart TV screen to 120 or 240 Hz, which helps brand manufacturers to launch new models with 4K × 2K display functions.

TV brand manufacturers adhere to the cost bottom line multi-core SoC cost-effective

Multi-core smart TV SoCs are impractical, but brand manufacturers have difficulty in relaxing the bill of materials cost floor in consideration of gross profit performance, and will choose the most cost-effective chip solution. Dai Hongjun admits that the current mainstream price of smart TV chips is mostly around US $ 20. In addition to the first-tier brands of Japan and South Korea, they can use self-developed chips, taking into account the benefits of improving performance and cost control, other second-tier TV brands can release costs There is not much space. Therefore, in the future, how to control the price of chips under the premise of upgrading dual cores will be the key to winning a place in the market.

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