Horizon Semiconductors is a provider of integrated silicon

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

 solutions that enable the secured delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment, serving the Consumer Electronics

Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...

, Broadcast, Broadband Communication and home entertainment markets. Horizon provides System-On-a-Chip and software solutions to manufacturers of set-top box

Set-top box

A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...

 equipment, professional encoding & transcoding equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products.

Technology

Using proprietary technologies and design methodologies, Horizon designs, develops & supplies complete System-on-a-Chip

System-on-a-chip

A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...

 (SoC) solutions and related hardware & software applications. Horizon’s product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable

Digital cable

Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...

, satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 and IPTV

IPTV

Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...

 set-top box

Set-top box

A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...

 (STB), Digital Television

Digital television

Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...

 (DTV), Blu-Ray player and recorder, Digital Video Recorder

Digital video recorder

A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...

 (DVR), Home Media Center

Home theater PC

A Home Theater PC or Media Center appliance is a convergence device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that supports video, photo, music playback, and sometimes video recording functionality...

s as well as professional encoders and transcoders addressing the broadcast market.

Horizon’s IP portfolio which includes coding techniques, proprietary algorithms and VLSI architectures have enabled the company to develop a diverse product portfolio, supporting leading compression standards and a wide range of advanced technologies. Horizon’s SoC families offer single and dual channel HD decoders as well as transcoding & encoding solutions, all operating in real-time and at resolutions up to 1080/60p (1920x1080, 60 frames/sec).

Horizon's SoCs are designed with the highest level of integration, embedding a variety of leading edge technologies including support for compression standards such as: H.264 (AVC), VC-1

VC-1

VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...

 (SMPTE 421M), MPEG-4

MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...

 and MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

, superior display processing, high definition 2D/3D graphics acceleration, multi-channel multi-format audio processing

Audio signal processing

Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of auditory signals, or sound. As audio signals may be electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either domain...

, application CPU, multi-stream high bandwidth transport processing, adaptive noise reduction pre-processing, and a wide variety of advanced connectivity and peripherals. All of Horizon’s SoCs are designed in accordance with world-leading secure processor architectures, enabling complete content protection

Content Protection for Recordable Media

Content Protection for Recordable Media and Pre-Recorded Media is a mechanism for controlling the copying, moving and deletion of digital media on a host device, such as a personal computer, or other digital player...

 in compliance with numerous Conditional access

Conditional access

Conditional Access is the protection of content by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to this content...

 and Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

schemes.

Horizon has developed and continues to build on the following technology foundations:

• Proprietary communications systems algorithms and protocols
• Advanced DSP hardware architectures
• System-on-a-chip design methodologies development for both standard cell and full-custom integrated circuit design
• Proprietary Simulations & Verification tools
• High-performance radio frequency, analog and mixed-signal circuit design using industry-standard CMOS processes
• High-performance custom microprocessor architectures and circuit designs
• Extensive software reference platforms to enable complete system-level solutions

Products

Horizon’s product portfolio includes:

• Single-chip cable, satellite or IPTV advanced set top box supporting analog front-end, dual channel HD playback, 2D and 3D graphics, advanced display processing and video format conversion for uploading media content to portable players and cell phones.
• Single-chip Blu-Ray player and recorder providing highest levels of visual experience for consumers.
• Professional stand-alone 1080/60p transcoder and encoder ICs.
• A variety of application specific SoC products.

• Horizon also offers reference design kits. These fully operational development systems include PCB schematics, full software design kit and documentation. Of special interest is the HzR4010, the industry’s smallest form-factor, stand-alone high definition multi-standard transcoder reference platform.

Manufacturing

Horizon manufactures products using standard CMOS process techniques. The standard nature of these processes permits the company to engage independent silicon foundries to fabricate Horizon’s integrated circuits.

Horizon products are currently fabricated with 90 nanometer & 65 nanometer, six, seven & eight layer metal structures.

Horizon's silicon foundry is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation in Taiwan. Horizon's assembly and testing is conducted by several subcontractors around the world.