Zilog Inc, which lost its microprocessor empire very many moons ago, has finally found itself a challenging and lucrative new role designing and making chips for television-related applications. In its latest coup, the Campbell, California company has been retained by Hirotech Corp of Tokyo to develop a graphics display chip for icon-based on-screen television menus. The single-chip device is intended to enable designers of mid- range television sets to replace character-based menus with low- cost, higher quality graphic images, Zilog says. The company is betting on the television set becoming the display and focal control point for accessing the Internet and a growing list of other appliances and services as well as terrestrial, cable and satel lite transmissions and video cassette recorders.The Hirotech design reduces the cost by eliminating the need for an external memory chip. Instead, it creates, stores and displays the screen image a line at a time. Under the pact, Hirotech’s patented real-time pixel graphics technology will be integrated with Zilog’s digital television controller; there’s no word on dates or prices.
