The Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has announced a partnership with ARC International that expands Fraunhofer's use of configurable processors to further the development and commercialization of consumer products based on digital video broadcast - handheld (DVB-H) technology. The digital video broadcasting project (DVB) is an industry-led consortium of over 250 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries committed to designing global DVB standards.

As part of this partnership, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute are using the low-power, small-gate count ARC 625D core to develop DVB-H chipset intellectual property (IP) that will provide consumers with mobile access to high-quality multimedia content. ARC will gain access to portions of the resulting DVB-H IP from the Fraunhofer Institute's R&D efforts. DVB-H enabled devices (based on the H.264 and AAC-Plus standards) are expected to deliver DVD-quality video and audio at data rates of less than 1Mbps. This emerging technology promises to enable full-motion video over wireless, satellite, and asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL) Internet connections.

The processor core is mid-range and embedded. It is designed as a processor solution for SoCs. Moreover, the core's configurable memory architecture makes it suitable for RTOS-based applications.

An X-Y memory subsystem and other powerful DSP options of the 625D core enable the elimination of separate logic or DSP blocks. Furthermore, using the ARChitect processor configurator custom instruction extensions can easily be incorporated.

DVB-H builds on DVB-T and is a system where data digital multimedia is transmitted in IP datagrams: IP Datacasting.