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TI Unleashes DaVinci Codec Modules


Digital media components move up the stack from ExpressDSP

By Edward J. Correia
March 15, 2006 — 
Texas Instruments is movin’ on up—the software stack. The company on March 6 unveiled a series of integrated, production-ready digital media components for its DaVinci and other DSP-based platforms.

The software, which includes codecs for voice, audio and video, is the first to be offered by the company so high in the stack. It is designed to work with TI’s ExpressDSP, its driver- and kernel-level APIs. Pricing for a full stack is around US$50,000 plus $2.20 per device; individual codecs and bundles may cost less. Components begin shipping at the end of March.

“We’ve made a conscious decision to invest in digital media software as a product,” said Brian Jeff, TI’s worldwide software marketing manager. “If you’re looking at building a portable media player, it’s usually the interface design that makes it stand out,” he said, adding that what’s under the covers is immaterial, as long as it works. “We’re enabling customers to focus on differentiating features while integrating tested codecs that don’t differentiate but are a requirement to have a successful product on the market.”

Free as in Support
Although the software is not free, TI’s marketing materials position the components against example code and demo versions offered by competitors and freeware that today is widely available as open-source. “We’re making the distinction because lots of companies say they have software, but they have not defined the details,” said Lisa Ferrara, manager of TI’s media relations program.

Conversely, the TI solutions are documented, and according to Jeff, extensively tested. “When we’ve talked to customers, they’ve said they are spending lots of time optimizing and testing software. Those tests are completed in TI’s facilities and have taken advantage of the hardware and our test vectors,” which he said number in the thousands. “The software is optimized for our platforms.”

And TI’s evaluation program includes four hours of free support. “Software is only as good as the support that’s behind it,” said Jeff. To help with the expected workload, TI has engaged about a dozen partners on several continents. “Partners were chosen based on their software expertise on video, audio and high-level OS issues and have a track record of customer satisfaction,” he said. This is the first time TI has engaged partners in this way, he added. “We’ve been getting important feedback on what would be required to go into broad distribution with support for multiple platforms.” Partners can provide not only TI’s software and support, but also custom integration services, he said.

Jeff said that developers also have the option of substituting some of TI’s components with their own, using the company’s published API. But they might be on their own in terms of support. “The [support provider] is probably going to want to support the [TI] software you are evaluating. But if you’re integrating your own code, and it complies with the algorithm standard, then it shouldn’t be a problem to make it work.”


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