Streaming Networks introduces nREF-1500, a reference board based on NXP Semiconductors PNX1500 (300 MHz).

The nREF-1500 provides developers with the most comprehensive reference board available in the market today. With PNX1500, the developer gets a complete audio, video and graphics system-on-a-chip, which is attached to a high bandwidth DDR main memory and state-of-the-art audio and video peripherals on the nREF-1500 board. In addition, the flexibility to use it in hosted or standalone mode aided by mini PCI, Ethernet, IDE, USB and JTAG interfaces makes the development of powerful multimedia applications easy and seamless. This is the only reference board in the market that features USB interface - a feature that enables developers to design, develop and debug their applications without needing an expensive JTAG board. Finally, it comes with an SDK complete with device drivers and example/test programs. The combination of powerful hardware and software tools makes Streaming Networks nREF-1500 a complete solution for developing applications that are on the cutting edge of multimedia software.

A number of nREF and TriREF development boards can be connected via a PCI backplane to create a multi-processor distributed environment. In the hosted mode configured board, the processor acts like a control processor and the processors on boards configured in stand-alone mode can act as media accelerators. Communication between the processors is via the PCI bus.