ATI's Xilleon 220
ATI unveiled information on a set-top box chipset called Xilleon 220 at the conference, and while it is not directly relevant to our focus on the desktop, it is of some interest.
ATI has long wanted to leverage its expertise in graphics and digital video to break into the high volume markets of set-top boxes (nearly 120 million network set-top boxes are projected to ship by 2005 according to Cahners In-Stat), satellite receivers, and those fanciable PVR (programmable video recorders). Xilleon 220 shows how far ATI has come and points out some interesting difference between Nvidia and ATI in their approach to their respective futures.
If you want integration, this is a beauty. The Xilleon 220 has pretty much everything you need from a system-on-a-chip (SOC) for the digital TV market. We all know about ATI's expertise and quality application with digital video hardware from its graphics boards, and it's good to see the transition the company has made into this extremely competitive, and thankless market.
It's got an integrated 300 MHz MIPS CPU running Linux, Win CE, and VxWorks. It interfaces to PCI, or an xDSL modem so, you can easily add peripherals to a design. It can drive two TVs. It has a 32/64 bit DDR/SDR interface, and can get approximately 3 GB/sec of memory bandwidth through two memory channels.
You can build a box to PVR multiple video windows which means that you can decide between 4 programs not to watch. You can attach a wireless 802.11 transmitter for a home network. Have sophisticated 2D/3D overlay graphics for a GUI.
I liked it. I hadn't kept up with ATI's work in the set-top box area. In fact, I thought they might have given up, but there's shades of the GameCube in the design of some of the interfaces, and it's good see that ATI is sticking to this strategy.
Now, Nvidia, on the other hand, is going down the long and winding road of integrating more and more of the PC's components.
So, both companies are approaching it from different ends of the spectrum: Nvidia top-down, and ATI bottom-up. All this knowledge has to end up benefiting Joe Public at some point.