Panasonic teams with ARM for a smart TV system-on-chip

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS COMPANY Panasonic has teamed up with the chip design firm ARM to launch a System-on-Chip (SoC) for smart TVs.

Panasonic is releasing its Uniphier MNWS0220 SoC module, which is powered by several ARM chips including dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processors, Corelink NIC-301 Network Interconnects and a Cortex-A9 POP for enhanced low power processing.

Combined, the technology offers speeds of up to 1.4GHz while keeping power consumption down, an important consideration for smart TVs that are becoming increasingly power-hungry.

Panasonic chose ARM because it allows extensive networking with consumers in addition to the high performance and low power cost of the technology, according to Yoshifumi Okamoto, director of Panasonic's corporate semiconductor division. Okamoto was also excited about the multimedia options available with ARM's chips, an essential factor for TV.

The SoCs are targetted at the internet connected digital TV market, which has not been fully exploited yet. Apple and Google are the dominant players in the smart TV arena, while a number of other big companies like Intel, Samsung and LG have jumped on the bandwagon. It's still early days, however, and the majority of people have yet to invest in connected TVs.

Dual-core processing is relatively new to smartphones and tablets, but even newer for smart TVs. The Cortex-A9 will be the fastest processor in the smart TV market, making the Uniphier MNWS0220 an appealing product for companies wanting to outdo the current competition. This is likely only the beginning, however, as just like the smartphone market we can expect other firms to put out newer and faster multi-core processors for connected TVs.

Panasonic is a big player in the overall TV market and previously launched its own smart TV offering called Viera Connect. It's likely we can expect its new SoC to feature in some of its upcoming TV ranges, but it seems Panasonic is also willing to offer the technology to other companies, which can only benefit the smart TV market as a whole. µ