IC makers face promise, peril in digital video.

DIGITAL video; IMAGING systems; INTEGRATED circuits; TEXAS Instruments Inc.; TOSHIBA KK; SIGMA Designs Inc.; PHILIPS Semiconductors Inc.

This article presents information on the digital video and imaging market. Rather than a single, huge business, the digital video and imaging market is a collection of small, distinct and risky point opportunities, with the potential to become a sieve through which industry resources pour. Such profound differences are calling forth fundamentally new, platform-oriented approaches from IC vendors. The grander of them was Texas Instruments Inc.'s plan for a single, scalable platform of hardware, software and tools for digital video development. The other piece of news was Toshiba Corp.'s agreement with video chip developer Sigma Designs Inc. to build reference designs combining Toshiba's MIPS CPUs with Sigma's video codecs. Among the chip heavyweights, Philips Semiconductors Inc. has been promoting its Nexperia platform, based on Philips' proprietary TriMedia DSP and MIPS cores. Similarly, STMicroelectronics is pursuing a reusable architecture.