Chipworks

In the manner in which many countries have structured their TV industry, the set-top box choice is made by the content provider and not the consumer. Yet with the combination of governments mandating the move to high definition and the increased bandwidth available for demand services, the electronics category is actually quite lucrative.

Market growth rate has been staggering in countries that have made the HDTV move, illustrated by the European Information Technology Observatory showing growth rates as high as 86% in some European countries.

The high volumes also ensure that the advanced logic devices incorporated in the electronics are built using the latest process technology, to reduce the cost-per-unit by packing more functionality onto individual chips, while also shrinking the die size and increasing the number of die per wafer. The system-on-chip (SoC) and signal processing heart of these devices represent some of the most advanced technology on the market, including 65 nm and 45 nm technology from leaders in the industry.

Yet because consumers don’t have the option to choose, they don’t pay that much attention to the features and performance of these devices, and the innovation goes unheralded. This teardown calls out the chip winners in one of the most feature rich devices on the market today.

Introducing the Teardown of the Motorola VIP2060 IPTV Set-Top Box

We chose this device by comparing the features of similar set-top boxes on the market and determined that this Japan-sourced device has some of the most advanced features available – in its context, it’s the equivalent of a 4G phone. Some of the capabilities:

• Quad tuner to watch and record via IPTV, cable, terrestrial broadcast, and satellite services
• Support for 1 Gbps broadband connections for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) applications
• Advanced media capabilities, including simultaneous recording, time-shifted viewing, delayed playback, and trick play DVR capabilities
• Transcoding MPEG-2 & MPEG-4 AVC video

	The Set-Top Box The Motorola VIP2060 IPTV set-top box features a compact design in a modern white case. It is deployed to KDDI customers in Japan. Motorola’s press image gives a nice view of the device.
	Top Removed With the top removed you see a typical layout of a motherboard, connectivity, a 500 GB hard drive, and an aluminum heat sink covering the video processor.
(click image to enlarge)	Main Board – Front This type of board layout has a very low cost of manufacturing since, unlike a phone, you are not required to manufacture boards with a high number of metal layers using specialized equipment. From here, we catalog the major design wins and a summary table is provided at the end of this teardown. Broadcom BCM7405 high performance, high definition (HD) satellite, cable, and IP set-top box DVR SoC, integrated using a 65 nm technology Broadcom BCM7043 HS//SD AVC/MPEG video/audio encoder and transcoder/transcaller/transrater. This enables the sharing of non-compatible video and audio content by transcoding (or matching) it to the proper format being used by the customer’s other devices. It is also fabbed in a 65 nm process 9 X Micron MT47H64M16HR 1 Gb DDR2 (package mark D9JWV) Texas Instruments TMS320 digital signal processor Winbond W9812G2GB-6 128 Mb SDRAM
	Main Board – Back Showing that this is a single-sided board.
(click image to enlarge)	Micron has a Number of DDR2 SDRAM Chips A bank of four (of nine) Micron 1 Gb DRAM memory chips used by the BCM7405, and the Fujitsu MB87L8500 HD TV decoder SoC The BCM7043 has 5 Gb of memory with it – both good examples of the amount of data storage needed these days!
(click image to enlarge)	Two Design Wins for Spansion Spansion GL01GP11FFIR1 NOR flash Spansion S29GL064N90TFI04 NOR flash
(click image to enlarge)	NXP Semiconductors TDA6651AC3 5V mixer/oscillator and low noise PLL synthesizer for hybrid terrestrial tuner
(click image to enlarge)	Channel Decoder Board The Toshiba TC90512XBG channel decoder
(click image to enlarge)	Hard Drive The focus of this teardown is the main board technology, but for reference, the Seagate 500 GB hard drive features obviously identifiable design wins from LSI for the hard drive controller, a Samsung memory chip, and a Texas Instruments SH6964B VCM motor controller.

Summary of Key Devices

Additional images – click to enlarge

Reports on technology found in the Motorola VIP2060

Broadcom BCM7405 Video/Audio SoC Functional Analysis

Texas Instruments TMS320 Digital Signal Processor Family Circuit and Process Analysis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 2:55 pm and is filed under TV / Set-Top. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.