Case Studies by Technology
Leading supplier of consumer electronics Operating System: pSOS Leading supplier of consumer electronics Operating System: pSOS Nucleus+ Pace Operating System: Proprietary NTL Operating System: Proprietary
Image Decompression: MPC Data took over support for an image decompression library. The library supported PNG, JPG and GIF image formats and was modified to work in a multi-tasking environment and to co-operatively 'block' during any stage in the decode process if data was unavailable.
Development Skill: Embedded device drivers (Porting time critical)
Graphics Libraries:
Numerous developments in the area of Digital TV On-Screen Display (OSD) graphics. MPC Data have developed many discrete graphics libraries covering the following areas:
• Several generations of graphics hardware devices from Philips, CCube and NEC;
• Assembler optimisation and portable low-level C for Motorola 68000, Coldfire and NEC processors;
• Low-level hardware acceleration using hardware 'blit'-ing and DMA;
• Developing standards-compliant interfaces for Mediahighway and DVB subtitling;
• Stringent performance optimisations to pass external test suites;
• Developing sophisticated tricks and techniques, often in close collaboration with hardware chip manufacturers, to extend the capabilities of the hardware to satisfy the end-customer's requirements;
• Developing time- and memory-efficient algorithms to handle clipping (rectangular and non-rectangular), masking, dashed-line drawing, multiple colour-depths, writing modes (replace, XOR, etc), transparency, etc;
• Font rendering;
• Bitmap conversion;
Development Skill: Embedded device drivers (Porting time critical)
Design and implementation of API test software for PowerTV platform port. To minimise the risk of problems during system integration, MPC Data were contracted to write a driver API test suite. Since the test suite encapsulated our independent interpretation of the PowerTV API specification, it revealed a number of potential misunderstandings, which were detected and corrected at an early stage in the project.
Development Skill: Embedded
Development of a high level STB control application called the resident application. The application ran on top of a proprietary OS and controlled the selection of channels to view, the display of screen assets and the launching of other applications
Development Skill: Application