[vorbis-dev] Implementing Vorbis in hardware

[Steve Underwood]

Winefred Washington wrote:

> Steve,
>
> The latest players have dedicated hardware decoders such as ST
> Microelectronics STA013, which can decode a bitstream and output the PCM
> data. The DSP or microcontroller is used to drive the LCD, monitor the
> keypad and manage the FLASH memory, but it does involve itself directly with
> the decoding process.
>

The STA013, and its siblings (STA014, STA015) are DSPs preprogrammed as MP3
decoders to sell into unsophisticated Asian OEMs scared by the idea of developing
and masking DSP code themselves (or more precisely, buying in an MP3 DSP package,
and putting their own bits with it). This is unlikely to produce a cost optimised
solution for high volume - it requires the machine have two processors, instead
of one. The other, control, processor may just be a low end 8 bitter, but it will
still cost nearly US$1. Since the OEMs ship MP3 players for just a few dollars
now (without a flash card), I doubt they can take this route. ST are trying to
follow the path taken by digital answering machine chip makers, and for the same
reasons. However, I doubt it will work here.

Regards,
Steve

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