Intel has made clear its intentions to develop Atom processor-based system-on-chip devices for digital TVs and set-top boxes.
The Atom processor CE4100 SoC, formerly codenamed Sodaville, is Intel's the first "consumer" chip fabbed on a 45nm process.
Traditionally the domain of PowerPC, MIPS and embedded processors from Japanese suppliers such as Renesas, Toshiba, NEC and Sony, the digital TV is now a target application for Intel.
Most recently, RMI has seen its MIPS-compatible Au1250 processor selected by Samsung Electronics for a range of portable LED TVs. RMI's Au1250 Processor is the first MIPS-compatible SoC processor supported for Android aimed at media and communications applications.
Mobile terminals may be the new battle ground for microprocessor suppliers, but Intel has not lost sight of the importance of the home multi-media appliance market.
MIPS has also made clear its aim to develop a range of media processors for digital TVs and set-top boxes running Google's Android operating system.
See: MIPS swamped by requests for Android set-top code
Intel's acquisition of Wind River in the summer means it has a choice of Linux-based operating systems to support with its set-top boxes processors, namely Android, LiMO and its own Moblin OS.
Along with choice of OS, another important feature of these digital TV SoCs is support for Adobe Flash and so Intel is working with Adobe to port Adobe Flash Player 10 to the CE media processors for better graphics and H.264 video playback.
The CE4100 processor is a 1.2GHz Atom and it is coupled with hardware decode for MPEG4 video, a NAND flash controller, support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory and 512K L2 cache.