2013/09/26 HEVC Decoding in Silicon

It looks like using HEVC compression for video delivery in traditional pay-TV systems is getting closer to a reality. In addition to a number of HEVC encoding and transcoding demos at IBC, there were several announcements of new SoCs designed for set-top boxes and gateways, capable of decoding HEVC at resolutions up to 4K.

Broadcom

At CES in January, Broadcom announced the BCM7445 that is able to decode UltraHD HEVC Main Profile encoded content. It recently announced the BCM7251 for IP set-top boxes and the BCM7366 has a full band capture satellite receiver for satellite set-top boxes. The BCM7439 and BCM7376 are designed for cable and satellite home media servers/gateways and support MoCA 2.0. The BCM7438 incorporates MoCA 2.0 for IP clients that connect to MoCA 2.0 gateways. All of the new SoCs decode up to 4K resolution of the HEVC Main10 profile, have dual-core ARM processors and transcode capabilities. They will support rapid integration of HDMI 2.0. HDMI 2.0 is necessary to send uncompressed UltraHD @60 fps from the source device to the display.

ST

At IBC 2013, ST introduced the Cannes and Monaco SoC families which offer HEVC decoding of up to UltraHD resolution. The STiH312 of the Cannes family is able to decode UltraHD content while the STiH305 and STiH310 were designed for HD decoding. The Monaco family is comprised of the STiH412, STiH407, and STiH410 and was designed for home media servers and home gateways. Each chip has a transcoding engine to deliver video to multiple screens. The STiH412 can decode UltraHD while the other members of the family handle only up to HD resolution. ST expects all six SoCs will be sampling in Q4 of this year.

ViXS

ViXS announced the XCode 6400 family at IBC, which decodes up to HEVC Main 10 Profile for resolutions up to 4K@60 fps. It integrates a dual-core ARM processor in addition to the media processing engine. It can also perform transcoding with the number of simultaneous streams dependent on the resolution of the stream being decoded.

There are solutions in the family designed for media gateways, DVR set-top boxes, and client boxes, some of which will have MoCA 2.0. The XCode 6400 family of SoCs will be sampling in the fourth quarter with volume production expected in Q2 2014. The new ViXS products will support HDMI 2.0 with a bridge device taking HDMI1.4 in and outputting HDMI 2.0. Future revisions of the products will integrate HDMI 2.0.

MRG Analysis:

The new SoCs will be priced at a premium to existing H.264 SoCs. Silicon vendors are hoping the new HEVC compression SoCs will raise their overall ASPs, helping their revenue grow. Some of them need the revenue growth more than others.

ViXS in its first quarter as a public company reported revenue of $8.1 million bringing it to $16.1 million for the first half of fiscal 2014 as compared to $16.9 million in the first half of fiscal 2013. The decrease is due to timing of product transitions. ViXS will use the new HEVC SoCs to gain share in the set-top box/gateway market as they are relatively new to the market.

STMicro’s Digital Convergence Group that includes STB SoCs has been losing revenue for the past several years falling from $1.4 billion in 2010 to $888 million in 2012, due to declines in volumes and ASPs. For the first half of 2013, the Digital Convergence Group revenues were $415 million.  ST is moving quickly to offer HEVC SoCs in order to ensure they have SoCs for the high end. The company was late to the media server/gateway market now served by its Orly product.

As opposed to the other two, Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Division revenues for the first half of the year as compared to the first half of 2012, were up to $1.105 billion from $1.037 billion. The 6.6% increase was partly due to an increase in STB SoCs of $117 million. Since HEVC decoders will be the new high end products, Broadcom wants to ensure they have a competitive play in the high end of the market.

Unlike the situation that existed when H.264 was standardized, MRG hasn’t seen new semiconductor startups coming to market with HEVC solutions. Many of the H.264 startups were bought by larger players in the market who did not develop the technology internally. Because the cost of developing a chip has skyrocketed, venture capital firms have not been as willing to invest in semiconductor startups. Now chip vendors who want to offer HEVC solutions have to do the development themselves.