PortalPlayer, founded in 1999, was a fabless semiconductor company that supplied

system-on-a-chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

semiconductors, firmware and software for personal media players. The company handled semiconductor design and firmware development, while subcontracting the actual

semiconductor manufacturing Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are ...

to merchant foundries. It gained recognition as the company with which

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...

contracted for development of the original

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

. The company went

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

with an IPO in November 2004 and traded on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

under

ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...

PLAY. Sales to Apple grew to 90% of the company's gross revenue, which ultimately hurt the company when Apple switched media processor chip vendors in its iPod lines. On January 5, 2007, Nvidia Corporation announced that it had acquired PortalPlayer, Inc. for about $357 million.

Products

PortalPlayer 5002

Dual ARM7TDMI cores with shared SRAM (3x 32KB banks). Errata in memory controller leads to halved data cache performance but fast SRAM. As the ARM7TDMI does not support cache coherency, individual ARM7TDMI cores do not have coherent views of DRAM. Custom logic is used to introduce coherency into the SRAM. Used by the following devices: *

: Generations 1, 2 and 3

PortalPlayer 5003

System-on-a-chip containing two ARM7 CPU cores, each running at up to 90 MHz. Fixes 5002 cache bug greatly improving performance of DRAM. Used by the following devices: * Rio Karma

PortalPlayer 5020

System-on-a-chip containing two ARM

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

cores, each running at 75 MHz. Expanded SRAM to 4 banks (128KB) using a crossbar style switch. Used by the following devices: *

: Generation 4, iPod Photo, and first generation iPod Mini * Philips HDD100/120 (Unconfirmed) * Tatung Elio M310 (system/pp5020.mi4 contains the string "PP5020AF-05.11-TG01-11.40-TG01-11.40-DT" and "Copyright(c) 1999 - 2003 PortalPlayer, Inc.") * Virgin player 5GB * MSI Megaplayer 540, has firmware system/pp5020.mi4 including "PP5020AF..." string, in Germany it has been sold as Medion MD81034 by ALDI *

iriver H10 Micro-Hard Drive versions *5GB or 6GB capacities *2.2 x 0.6 x 3.8 inches (96 grams) *1.5 inch TFT screen (128 x 128, 260 000 colors) *Can view TXT and JPEG files *Supports MP3, WMA, WMA DRM, MPEG 1 Audio, MPEG 2 Audio, and MPEG 2. ...

, all variations, including the 5GB, 6GB, and 20GB models * Edirol R-1 (Unconfirmed rumor on what chip but unit displays "Powered by PortalPlay Inc. 1999-2004" * M-AUDIO Microtrack ver.1 " string pp5020d-tf" * Olympus m:robe MR-100

PortalPlayer 5021C-TDF

Used by the following devices: *

: First generation iPod Nano and fifth generation iPod with video

PortalPlayer 5022

SRAM is no longer partitioned into fast and slower banks; all have uniform access speed. Used by the following devices: *

: Second generation iPod Mini *

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

: GoGear HDD1630/HDD6320/HDD6330 > PP 5022 + codec Wolfson WM8731L

PortalPlayer 5024

PP5022 with integrated Austria Microsystems AS3514 DAC and power management chip. Used by the following devices: * Sandisk Sansa e200 series *

GoGear SA9200http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GoGearSA9200info

PortalPlayer APX

PortalPlayer's application processor series. Used by: * Microsoft Zune HD * The current generation NVIDIA Tegra mobile processors

References

External links

PortalPlayer Wiki
at Rockbox (Open Source firmware)

of the firmware that almost all (non-iPod) Portalplayer models use Fabless semiconductor companies Companies based in Santa Clara, California IPod software Electronics companies established in 1999 Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States 2007 mergers and acquisitions Nvidia 1999 establishments in California