Chip maker Marvell is expanding its Armada line of system-on-a-chip solutions for set-top-boxes with a new octa-core processor with support for 4K video.
The Marvell Armada 1500 Ultra is an 8-core, 1.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A53 chip with Vivante GC7000XS graphics.
The company’s targeting pay TV operators and set-top-box makers. So you probably won’t find the Armada 1500 Ultra in smartphones or tablets. Th company has other chips for that. But the Armada 1500Â could be in upcoming cable boxes or Android TV hardware.
Marvell has a history of working with Google on TV solutions: the Chromecast media streaming device uses a Marvell Armada 1500 mini processor.
The new system-on-a-chip can handle HEVC and VP9 video at 3840 x 2160 pixel resolutions and 60 frames per second. It also supports OpenGLS ES 3.1 and Android Extension Pack, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, eMMC 5.0, and up to 4GB of RAM.
Marvell is showing off the new chip at the TV Connect show in London this week, but it’s not clear when the new processor will be ready to ship.
One specification I would really like to know about all these newer chips claiming support for hardware HEVC decoding, is how high of a bitrate of HEVC can they support?
I’d feel comfortable buying something that I need to be 4K ready, as long as it can handle bitrates higher than 20-25mbps. 4K h265 content (as rare as it is) has so far been above 20mbps (some consumer cameras record h265 4K content around 40mbps!)