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SAN MATEO, CALIF. - Intel Corp.'s push to incorporate native signal processing (NSP) on the Pentium processor promises to make the multimedia industry, particularly makers of sound and graphics add-in cards, take a long hard look at their business.
In its most glorious visions of NSP, Intel sees a powerful Pentium processor aided by specialized software performing all multimedia tasks including digital signal processing (DSP) and MPEG compression and decompression, removing the need for additional sound and video processors or add-in cards.
Together with Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Spectron Microsystems Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has already begun to use the established architecture of its Pentium processor to directly produce multimedia features. Intel claims NSP will boost, rather than eradicate, makers of sound and video boards.
"This is a software solution, not a hardware solution," said Gerald Holzhammer, director of Intel's media architecture lab. Currently, multimedia demands a host of specialized add-in boards. However, Intel has teamed with Spectron to produce an IA-SPOX (Intel Architecture SPOX) software package that treats specialized multimedia applications as nothing more than software modules or "tasks" to be completed by the Pentium processor.
"The traditional method {of multimedia applications} requires lots of add-in boards, with memory on each of the boards, as well as the processor. You even have to put audio again on the videoconferencing card," Holzhammer said.
"From a PC evolution point of view, we can't keep adding PC add-on cards like we've done for the 486 generation, with high-end programmable add-ins," he said. "It doesn't make sense for a 286 or 386 to be in signal processing. It's inevitable that we would solve the cost issue, as well as the installing problems with add-on cards, compatibility, and the like."
NSP on Pentium PCs would consist of three main areas: shared audio, moving the I/O onto the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, and the IA-SPOX software package. In fact, audio processes would not be directly handled by the processor itself, but by an "inexpensive" audio codec that replaces traditional add-in cards.
The processor remains the key to Intel's NSP environment. Offering 64-bit data paths, plus an 8K+8K level 1 cache, Holzhammer believes that the Pentium architecture, as is, forms the foundation for a unified multimedia engine. "The...