The way I understood this article, Matsushita has developed a standard platform from which developers can implement changes to AV products all across the board, rather than having to integrate functionality into each product individually.
Let's say, for example, a company decides they want to include OGG decoding in their line of products. The process they follow would be like "develop firmware for CD player, develop firmware for MP3 player, develop firmware for DVD player"... o­n and o­n for each product they want to add that functionality to.
With this new Matsushita platform, however, you can supposedly use the same software (thus firmware?) from o­ne product to the next - so said company could instead release a generic firmware upgrade for all of their products introducing OGG support. That would be

Matsushita has announced o­n the 1st that they have developed the "UniPhier" digital consumer electronic unification platform, and will begin its introduction into their products as early as first quarter 2005.

The UniPhier platform consists of system LSI containing both CPU and video codecs, middleware, and OS platform software. Products containing UniPhier will be introduced in the first quarter of 2005, and Matsushita plans to finish its introduction by the end of 2006.

To start, a core platform for TVs, DVD recorders, home server, mobile phones, and car AV will be developed. Matsushita has said that they have intensified the high level of AV functionality, low power consumption, realtime processing technology, and security technology offered by each product genre.

With the use of the UniPhier processor (containing both CPI and media processor), the structure is scalable - it will be packaged so to contain the optimum functionality of different fields and products. Because the software of each product will be relatively similar, functions can also be added by enhancements to middleware.

The main goal of the introduction of UniPhier is to improve upon software development efficiency. Up until now, hardware has been prepared for cellular phones, DVD recorders, home services, digital TVs, et. al - then the microcode, OS, middleware, and applications were developed separately.

In the UniPhier integration platform, companies/individuals need o­nly develop software to go o­n top of each product's base hardware; Matsushita has said that this allows for a more than 5-fold increase in software development efficiency. Also, o­nce a platform has been developed, this not o­nly increases authenticity, software used in other products can be used again.

Three types of fundamental hardware organizations have been prepared: cellular phone-related, personal AV-related, car/home AV-related. Each of the devices features a common platform, and unification of products in these different genres is said to be simple.

For hardware, either an ARM-related or Matsushita CPU can be chosen. The newly developed UniPhier media procossor supports the C/C++ programming language as well. Also planned for expansion is the current parallel command processor optimized for AV uses; a data parallel processor, and MPEG-2/H.264 hardware engines are also planned.

Furthermore, the "PEAKS processor" image improvement engine currently contained in the VIERA line is also planned for integration in the UniPhier platform.

UniPhier stands for "Universal Platform for High-quality Image-Enhancing Revolution."



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20040901/pana1.htm

Press Release:
http://matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/jn040901-1/jn040901-1.html