National Semi releases Net SoC

National Semiconductor today has released their new Geode system-on-a-chip processors intended for set-top boxes, thin clients and PDAs. According to the company, the Geode lets designers use as few as three chips for information appliances as the processor will support graphics processing input/output, peripheral component interconnect, IDE hard drive connection, and Universal Serial Bus, thus reducing costs and power consumption. National Semi plans to continue integration with the addition of radio-frequency technologies such as 802.11 or Bluetooth to their SOCs.

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