Following the departure of Intel from the TV chipset market, Google has now chosen California-based Marvell and Taiwanese MediaTek as its partners for Google TV.
Marvell’s Armada 1500 HD Media system-on-a-chip (SoC) has been designed into the next generation of Google TVs debuting at CES 2012, the chip supplier said Thursday. The chip sits at the core of Marvell’s ForeSight platform and is a dual-core processor with a graphics engine that can play back 1080p video.
“I believe this is a major breakthrough movement and it’s just the beginning of our bigger vision,” said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell, in a statement.
“The Google and Marvell teams have been working closely together to bring our combined software and chipset technologies to market to grow the Google TV ecosystem of manufacturers and devices. Marvell-powered Google TV solutions will enable powerful products to be brought to market at attractive prices,” said Mario Queiroz, VP, product management Google TV.
Google also said that Taiwanese semiconductor firm MediaTek would create chips for Google TV products. CE manufacturer LG has announced it will use its own L9 chipset to run Google TV.
Google TV first launched on Intel’s Atom processor, which is also part of Liberty Global’s Horizon project and Comcast’s Xfitity home gateway. The chip manufacturer decided to withdraw from the TV market last October, however claiming it would continue support for set-top boxes.
