Digital Set-Top-Box Linux Platform Software Design And Implementation

Currently, the consumer electronic has been evolved by digital revolution. It has three major charactars: Digitalization, Networking and Information Processing. In particular, the rapid development of microelectronics implies that embedded computing technology will play a key role in this industry. In China, telecom network, cable network and broadband network are developing rapidly, and the state is pushing TV digitalization. These provide the strong power for Digital Set-Top-Box (DSTB) development. At present, the DSTB with embedded technology is a hotspot in digital consumer electronic appliance.The key technical challenge of DSTB is how to design a system with low cost and high performance, and how to use software technology to integrate computing, multimedia processing, network communication, media data codec and crypto technologies into the final product.According to the marketing requirement, this paper researched a reference system design for low cost and high performance DSTB solution. The design is based on dual processors architecture (application processor and media processor), using Intel? Xscale PXA255 as a powerful application processor and modifing the firmware of DVD processor to make it as high performance media processor. The platform software design covers following technologies: bootloader, Linux kernel porting, dual processors communication protocol and media processing device driver.