Micronas NIT

The first NSDC at RT-RK

Beginnings

Micronas NIT was the first NSDC by RT-RK. Cooperation with Micronas GmbH (at the time ITT Intermetal) from Freiburg began in 1997 with projects in three major areas:

DSP optimization – work on first voice codecs (G728, G723.1, G729) had continued with audio decoders’ AC3 and WMA speed and memory optimization
Development of tools had started with DSP compactor (automatic code size optimization) and continued with C compiler
Chip verification and FPGA rapid prototyping. First verification for WorldSpace – first single chip satellite radio. The activities had continued with digital TV SoC rapid prototyping

Team growth

The team had grown from 2001 (the year of Micronas NIT foundation) to 2009, from the first 17 up to 192 engineers. In 2009 Micronas decided to step out from the consumer business. Today, Micronas is part of TDK family known as TDK-Micronas GmbH.

Progress in major domains

TV software: From 2002 to 2009 the team had been engaged on analog SoCs (VCTX, VGCB, Premium) and digital TV SoCs (MDB, MDD, PremiumD) forming the native part of the software factory led by Dr. Uwe Strohbeck. At its peak this team had over 100 R&D engineers serving customers such as: Vestel, Grundig, Loewe, METZ, TechniSat, LG, Samsung, JVC, Panasonic, and many others.

From Micronas maket update, November 2007

TV set brands with software developed by Micronas NIT, 2004

IMAS, the first FPGA based platform for digital video processing developed at Micronas NIT

ATV32 team, painting by Radmila Padejski

DSP software: The activities had evolved from the initial porting of audio/voice decoders on MASx family of DSPs to new generations of DSPs including YDFP, DeCypher, and APX.

Debugging in a Micronas lab, Freiburg

Devices with MAS D/F DSP software: MP3 players, voice codec Toshiba G.729 standard

Images made during a JPEG project, 2001

From DSP software to development of tools, team

Tools: Development of the second-generation compiler with support for fix point Harvard architecture.

MAS DSP development tools, IDE

Paper for Telsiks 2001 on compiler design

Team working on MAS tools

Paper for Etran 2022 on compiler improvements

PC peripherals SoCs: One of the most interesting topics had been firmware customization for UACB, single chip USB audio SoC. The team had directly supported Microsoft XBOX development. This SoC had been the backbone of many new products developed by the team and brought the first royalties to RT-RK.