Cox Inks National X1 Deal with Comcast. The Cox licencing deal is also good news for the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the preintegrated software stack for set. The RDK is a standardized software stack with localization plugins created to accelerate the deployment of next. A joint venture between Comcast. Comcast would release the RDK and CPC source code to its licensees. The SoC RDK is distributed by the SoC vendor. Figure 1: RDK Software Stack.

Comcast’s Reference Development Kit shortens development cycles. In today’s competitive market, cable operators need to be both nimble and thrifty when it comes to developing new products and services. Del Bisonte A La Realidad Virtual Roman Gubern Pdf more. Ft 897 Control Software. Currently, it takes about two years to deliver a new set-top box from the design stage into a customer’s home, but over the past few years, Comcast has been developing its Comcast Reference Development Kit to cut that innovation cycle in half. In May, during a panel session at The Cable Show in Boston, Comcast’s Steve Reynolds, senior vice president of CPE and home networking, outlined the elements of the Comcast RDK and why it’s important to the cable operator industry. “The typical set-top box development cycle was taking about 24 months when we launched this project, and that’s just a long time to go through the whole process of building the box, building the software, and getting everything up and running,” Reynolds said.

“So we had this notion of building a reference design for software that would bring all of the modules together in a pre-integrated kit, where we could take that kit and work directly with the SoC manufacturers to get the RDK up and running on those chip platforms before they even started building the box around that chip. “By working directly with the SoC manufacturers to do that porting, we really make all of the software that we need for a box OEM available essentially when that chip comes back from samples, and our hope is that by launching this software platform and doing all of this advance work with the SoC manufacturers, we'll be able to cut that development cycle to a year, or even under a year, to launch a brand new set-top box.” The Comcast RDK was developed internally using open-source components and by working with various vendors. The RDK is a community-based project that allows developers, vendors and cable operators to use a defined stack of software on one layer in order to provision set-top boxes and gateways. Dell Laptops Lan Drivers.

Reynolds compared the RDK to the community of handset developers that have rallied around the Android operating system in order to accelerate the speed to market of new devices. The RDK allows all of the interested parties to develop once and then scale across multiple environments – in the CableCard/QAM/MEPG-2 world of today, as well as in the IP environment of tomorrow. While Comcast doesn’t provide a full list of licensees, it has publicly licensed the RDK to itaas, Entropic and Broadcom. Cable operators that have openly embraced the RDK to date include, in addition to Comcast, Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global. “I think from a cable operator perspective, the advantage of having a single software platform is pretty clear in the sense that they get the advantage of scale, and third-party application developers can develop to a single set of functions and capabilities,” said Jatin Desai, chief technology officer at itaas.