Broadcom develops ultra-compact STB platform with 4x4 Wi-Fi

Broadcom Develops Ultra-compact Set-top Box Platform With Integrated 4×4 Wi-Fi
Delivers 5G WiFi and HEVC Compression to Platforms Smaller Than a Smartphone

LAS VEGAS — CES International 2015 — Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today introduced the world’s first HEVC set-top box (STB) system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices with integrated MHL 2.0. Broadcom’s BCM7250 and BCM72502 chips bring full-featured set-top box functionality to compact HDMI stick and popular streaming media player box formats, allowing carriers to deliver services wirelessly anywhere in the home, while taking up less space and with fewer wires with MHL powering.

These new compact reference designs also include integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi capabilities. This includes Broadcom’s new BCM4366, the world’s fastest 4×4 MU-MIMO device offering outstanding connectivity performance.

“This new family brings a major boost in capabilities to what has been primarily an over-the-top (OTT) segment of the market,” said Rich Nelson, Broadcom Senior Vice President of Marketing, Broadband & Connectivity Group. “Operators are looking for ways to offer differentiated services on these compact devices and the BCM7250 and BCM72502 with HEVC technology, coupled with our latest video-grade Wi-Fi, makes this possible.”

The BCM7250 is targeted at the popular OTT streaming media player form factor and the BCM72502 is specifically designed for HDMI stick or dongle applications. The BCM7250 family and reference platforms provide 2×2 and 4×4 5G WiFi connectivity options via a high-speed PCIe interface. The 4×4 5G WiFi option is powered by Broadcom’s new BCM4366 device, which has been designed from the ground up to enable broadcast-quality video delivery over Wi-Fi. The BCM4366 incorporates a host of features targeted specifically to improve the robustness of wireless video transmission and provide wireline-quality performance over Wi-Fi. This enables equipment manufacturers to develop high-performance, secure, compact designs with reliable wireless content delivery and gives operators powerful solutions for no-new–wires easy customer installation.

Broadcom’s new devices integrate advanced security engines that support a wide range of the latest conditional access and digital rights management technologies. This provides service providers and equipment manufacturers with new capabilities to securely support full IPTV multicast services, unlike existing devices that are typically limited to OTT streaming services. As a result, operators now have the capability to offer a range of services, from full-service IPTV with multi-room gateway/client architecture to a standalone dongle for an entry level OTT offering using the same platform.

Key Features of the BCM7250 and BCM72502

• High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)/H.265 compression
• 6000 DMIPS B15 ARMv7-A CPU
• 1.0 Gpix/s OpenGL ES 3.0 3D GPU
• Supports HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 or MHL 2.0 digital video output
• PCIe connectivity to Broadcom BCM4366 4×4 carrier-grade 5G WiFi
• 480/576p30 transcode
• 1080p60 10-Bit HD HEVC decode and 4Kp60 upscale
• High Performance DDR3/DDR4 system memory interface
• Supports Android, Chromium, DIAL, DLNA CVP2, Miracast protocols
• Supports Broadcom Trellis Multi-Application Framework and DTVKit software stack

Availability

The Broadcom BCM7250, BCM72502 and BCM4366 are currently sampling.