A £1.7 million (€2.16 million) EU research project to develop a universal "set-top" box for international television use, has been awarded jointly to PEI Technologies, a University of Limerick campus company, the National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork and semiconductor company, Analog Devices.

One of the largest, single state, research projects awarded to the Republic will see the high-tech consortium investigating new micro-circuit design methods aimed at producing a single circuit able to handle all formats. This will consequently make the set-top box cheaper to manufacture and more versatile.

Prof Phil Burton, Centre Director of PEI Technologies, said that the system, which will be used in DVD players and digital TVs of the future, will work through a mix of advanced mathematics and circuit design.

He said there are only a few companies in the world, including Analog, which have the mathematical and electronic skills to carry the concepts to a full practical model which results in something that the "man in the street" can use. Set-top boxes are used to convert cable, MMDS, digital and conventional terrestrial TV signals into a form suitable for a normal television and as digital TV is introduced around the world so the demand for this type of circuit will increase.

The microchip to be developed will receive a TV signal, convert it into computer type information and then perform about 100 million calculations per second on the information before outputting it to the television.

The aim of the project, which is part of the ESPRIT-Mixed Signal initiative, is to put everything into one single circuit and the design team will rely heavily on computer-aided design to check and simulate the final circuit.

A new system architecture that was originally proposed by Dr Colin Lyden of the NMRC will be used in the project and 15 design engineers will spend 18 months coming up with a prototype design.

PEI Technologies will be working on the design of high-speed, low-voltage amplifiers; Analog Devices is providing the project management and a significant part of the design team and the NMRC will also provide design skills to the project.

The final product will be manufactured by Analog Devices on a 0.25 micron CMOS process where transistors have dimensions down to one four thousandth of a millimetre.