Boxee told us there’s a 1.2GHz part inside the Box, so if I had to guess I’d peg it as the CE4110 to keep costs down.
#Boxee box review 2014 tv#
It’s unclear what SKUs are used in the Boxee Box and Google TV platforms. Their names and specs are below: Intel CE4100 Family Although we’ve been calling it the CE4100, there are actually four SKUs that presently make up the CE4100 family. The chip runs at either 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz depending on the particular SKU. It has a 512KB L2 cache and a 24/32KB L1 cache (I/D).
#Boxee box review 2014 1080p#
This is 2x the memory bus width of the Atom Z600 series targeted at smartphones and made necessary due to the bandwidth demands of decoding high bitrate 1080p video.Īs I mentioned above the CPU core is identical to all other 45nm Atom processors. It runs at up to 400MHz depending on the particular CE4100 model you’re looking at.įeeding all of the blocks on the CE4100 are two 32-bit DDR2/DDR3 memory controllers. The CE4100 GPU is the same PowerVR SGX 535 used in the MID/smartphone implementations of Atom. Intel has an on-die security processor that handles all of the DRM and conditional access necessary to enable popular multichannel lossless audio codecs and decode protected video content.
For audio and video you’ve got HDMI, SPDIF and RCA audio outputs. There’s an integrated NAND controller for on-board solid state storage, 10/100/1000 ethernet support, 2 x 3Gbps SATA ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports. Since Atom is a general purpose x86 processor Boxee/D-Link do have the ability to decode MJPEG (or any other codecs) in software, assuming the CPU core is fast enough to handle the task.Īll the I/O you need is also supported by the CE4100. Intel integrates a Tensilica HiFi 2 DSP that can decode everything you’d want to on a set-top box: Dolby Digital 5.1, TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, MP3, AAC and WMA9.Īs some Boxee users have discovered, MJPEG isn’t supported by the video decode block. There’s a dual stream 1080p video decoder that can offload H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX and VC-1 decoding at up to 60 fps (hardware accelerated JPEG decoding is also supported). The CE4200, announced at this year’s IDF, is the next member of the family and we’ll probably see a CE5100 at IDF 2011.Īt a high level the CE4100 used in the Boxee Box pairs a 45nm Atom core (architecturally identical to what’s in Moorestown and Atom based netbooks/nettops) with a bunch of CE specific IP blocks. Intel’s goal in this space is to put out a new chip every 12 months. Intel is expecting two more CE4100 based products to ship in Europe in the near future and over the next 12 months we’ll see even more product launches. The Boxee Box and all Google TV products (Logitech Revue, Sony’s Google TV box and the four Sony TVs with integrated Google TV) all run some variant of the CE4100. Today the CE4100 is used in a decent number of devices, but not that many when you consider how many netbooks, notebooks and desktop PCs use Intel’s x86 silicon. Several months later, Google started talking about Google TV and we knew where the CE4100 would eventually find its home. The CE4100 announcement happened a year after the CE3100 and Intel was light on partner details at the time. That partnership didn’t really go anywhere, so when Intel introduced the successor to the CE3100, aptly named the CE4100, Yahoo was nowhere to be found. You’d get your normal TV viewing experience but you’d be able to pull in content from the web. The goal was to enable internet connected TVs equipped with Intel CE3100 SoCs running Yahoo powered widgets.
Intel first started down the path to Smart TV two years ago at IDF alongside Yahoo.
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