I read with interest Samsung’s announcement stating they are outperforming the market with strong sales of their LCD and LED HDTVs. They plan to ship 22M LCD sets this year, up 10% from 2008, and had a 19% market share in Q1 2009. I certainly believe this trend is correct and I can tell you first hand that I personally account for two of these projected 22M units. I am usually late to adopt the latest in home consumer electronics mostly because I am a ‘frugal’ engineer by nature (although my wife just calls me cheap), but, with two of my 10+ yr old TVs on their last legs I had no choice but to upgrade. When I went shopping it was interesting to see that only HDTVs are available (if you discount the one lonely ‘tube’ set in the corner of the store). This certainly will account for strong HDTV sales even in a weakened economy as consumers must transition to HD. I was also surprised at how many people were actually buying HDTVs both times I was in the store since, again, we hear all the gloom and doom about the weakened economy.
One of the reasons that I chose a Samsung HDTV was because of all the positive reviews that I read online for 32” sets as I researched my options (great price/performance). It certainly did not hurt that Sonics’ technology is used by Samsung in their HDTVs. I love the picture quality of HD and, as a long time DSP engineer, I could appreciate all of the signal processing required to make these sets finally practical (de-blocking, de-ringing, edge detection, scaling, de-interlacing, noise filtering, overlays, color space conversion, just to name only a few). The bandwidth needed for all this processing is currently between 4.5-5.5Gb/s for high-end HDTV and is quickly moving to 9-11Gb/s for the next-generation designs. To accomplish all this data processing, an HDTV SoC (system-on-a-chip) typically contains two CPU cores, video decoder, video encoder, 2D graphics processor, audio decoder, NTSC/PAL decoders and a wide array of peripherals. What all these blocks have in common is that they are constantly competing for memory resources. The memory choke point in these HD SoCs has been a topic of particular interest for Sonics research. Sonics has developed algorithms for memory load balancing in a multi-channel memory system (call interleaved memory technology or IMT) along with an advanced memory scheduler to optimize DRAM access. As a Sonics employee, it feels good to know that we are contributing to the success of these HDTV SoC designs with our on-chip communications networks. Our connectivity products have been ideal solutions to solve the data flow management between all these cores and memory. If you are interested in more details on this topic, I encourage you watch Sonics’ CTO Drew Wingard’s presentation, ‘Feeding the Beasts: Optimized Shared Memory Solutions for MPSoCs.’
As much as I like my new HDTV, manufacturers continue to push the technology envelope with increasingly complex algorithms to improve picture quality, and, at the same time, make thinner, lower cost and lower power TVs. Faster LCD response times, for example, are moving refresh rates from 60Hz to 120Hz, and even as fast as 240Hz to reduce judder. With each new generation of HDTV designs we are seeing the memory bandwidth double. These access requirements are pushing the need to move from DDR2 to DDR3 memories making the use of Sonics’ multi-channel memory solutions even more critical. In addition to image processing, new features are being added like tweeting from your HDTV, web browsing and wireless HDMI for HD distribution in the home. Looking at the way technology is moving it is doubtful that I will be able to wait another 10 years for a new TV set.
Frank Ferro
Director of Business Development at Sonics, Inc.
Tags: economy, hd, hdtv, imt, IP, lcd, led, memory, network, NoC, on-chip network, SoC, sonics