ATI's System-on-Chip for Set-Top Boxes

ATI is one of those companies that has its fingers in every pie from end-user products to the silicon that drives them. At the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, ATI is now showing off its XILLEON 220 system-on-chip (SOC) for the digital set-top box and digital TV markets. ATI says that XILLEON 220 integrates all the processor, graphics, video, audio, and I/O capabilities needed in a set-top box or digital TV into a single chip. It includes a 300 MHz MIPS CPU, dual-HD capable MPEG decoder, audio decoder, display engine, 2D and 3D graphics engine, conditional access, transport demultiplexers, and PCI, USB, and hard disk drive interfaces. According to the company, all you need is a tuner, modem, and memory to push an STB out the door. The XILLEON 220 includes a 300 MHz CPU that delivers 390 Dhrystone MIPS performance, personal video recorder support with copy protection, support for two TVs in two different locations, and support for including DVB (digital video broadcasting), (worldwide), ATSC, DIRECTV (USA), OpenCable (USA), MHP (multimedia home platform) (Europe), and BSDigital (broadcast satellite digital) (Japan). It also has dual DDR memory channels for up to 3 Gigabytes/second memory bandwidth and the ability to decode multiple high-definition or standard-definition video streams while blending them with 32-bit true-color graphics. The board supports most embedded operating systems, including Linux, Microsoft Windows CE, and VxWorks and is available in two versions. XILLEON 220S supports standard definition video decode and XILLEON 220H supports both standard-definition and high-definition video. Chip volume production is targeted to begin in Q1 2002. ATI also throws in the fact that the XILLEON 220 operates 300 MHz while IBM's STB045xx operates at 252 MHz. Haven't they heard from AMD that clock speed can be misleading ?