Sigma Designs Launches Feature-Rich SoC for Mainstream Media Players

SMP8674 Provides Advanced Feature Set With Smaller Footprint and Lower Power

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Sigma Designs (NASDAQ: SIGM), a leading provider of System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for home entertainment, connectivity and control, today announced the release of its SMP8674 media processor. The latest member of SMP8670 product family delivers solid performance and advanced features at an aggressive price point for OEMs and ODMs. The flexible SMP8674 can be configured to address multiple markets including hybrid IPTV Set-Top Boxes (STBs), OTT streaming players and WiDi and Wi-Fi display receivers.

“The SMP8674 offers an optimal blend of multimedia features and CPU horsepower for the mainstream STB market,” said Waheed Rasheed, Sigma Designs’ vice president of product marketing. “Some of the advanced features supported by the SMP8674 include: the widest range of industry standard AV COCECs, including new broadcast audio standards like Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-Broadcast; a new Wi-Fi display API with ultra-low latency video performance designed for wireless display receivers; and a special security facility for chipset pairing used in the latest conditional access systems. With a commitment to mainstream applications, the SMP8674 also achieves very low BOM designs due to the level of integration and efficient DDR3 interface.”

To accelerate time-to-market for consumer designs, the SMP8674 offers two ready-for-market reference design kits that offer Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connectivity between televisions and either phone, tablet, or laptop devices. The Wi-Fi Display reference kit combines the SMP8674 with the Atheros AR9342 to provide a compact design with a separate power supply. The USB Dongle reference kit combines the Sigma SMP8674 SoC and the Atheros AR6203 to provide a miniature package configuration utilizing a powered USB port and direct HDMI output. The SMP8674 is also available on Sigma’s general purpose Vantage development board for set-top box and other designs.

With the SMP8674, the product family migrates to Sigma’s latest Software Development Kit (SDK) which offers an intuitive new porting layer called SAPI (Simple API) for realizing fast time-to-market porting of Hybrid STB middleware. The new SDK improves developer productivity with a range of reference implementations of OTT applications like Netflix and VUDU along with proprietary application frameworks for developing Webkit-HTML5 applications or Adobe Air applications.

SMP8674 will be available mid-July.