Popcorn Hour 200 Series Chipset Details
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Difficult - for advanced users, may require detailed technical knowledge, use at your own risk!
| Applicable to the following NMT |
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| Popcorn Hour NMT Models: | C-200, A-200/210 |
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Contents |
200 Series Chipset Details
Note: The information below is compiled by users, this is not official Syabas/Popcorn Hour documentation.
There are 9 processor cores in the Sigma Designs SMP8643 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) used by the Popcorn Hour A-200, A-210 & C-200, described below.
Main processing cores
IPU (MIPS 4KEc) 333 Mhz
CPU (MIPS 74K) 667 Mhz (includes FP calculation instructions)
DRM processor core (Content provider security)
XPU (MIPS) 333 Mhz
Transport Demux core (AES, 3DES etc)
RISC 333 Mhz
HD Video cores
RISC 333 Mhz
RISC 333 Mhz
DSP cores (handles audio)
DSP 333 Mhz
DSP 333 Mhz
DSP 333 Mhz
Other
There are also the two Ethernet controllers (Wifi + Wired Ethernet), USB, SATA and DMA controllers.
Connecting the processor cores is a 32 line (32 bit) Main bus (GBus).
Dedicated hardware channels offload main bus from heavy traffic to DSP and DMA etc.
Information from user tux99 indicate that the processor core clock frequency is lower (661.5 Mhz for MIPS 74K and 330.75 Mhz for the rest of the cores).
Several users have been able to exceed 200 Mbps which shows that ethernet is not limited to 10/100 Mbps. Thoughts by user alanh supports this conclusion.
The Sigma 8643 is identical to Sigma 8642 with exception regarding Macrovision which is not supported in Sigma 8643. Macrovision is an old analogue copy protection which C-200 does not need. Please read the Sigma 8640 series brochure found here for more details.
More information on the cores from MIPS can be found here.
