PortalPlayer

PortalPlayer was a that supplied  semiconductors, firmware and software for. The company handled semiconductor design and firmware development, while subcontracting the actual to merchant. The company was acquired by Nvidia in 2007.

History
PortalPlayer was founded in June 1999 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California with branch offices in, and , India. The company gained recognition for being contracted by Apple Computer for development of the first iPod. The company went with an  in November 2004 and traded on the  under  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 for its iPod lines.

On November 6, 2006, Nvidia Corporation announced that it would acquire PortalPlayer for about $357 million. The acquisition was completed on January 5, 2007.

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:
 * Apple Computer: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-generation iPods

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:

PortalPlayer 5020
System-on-a-chip containing two ARM CPU cores, each running at 75 MHz. Expanded SRAM to 4 banks (128KB) using a crossbar style switch. Used by:
 * Apple Computer: 4th-generation iPod, iPod photo, and 1st-generation iPod mini
 * HDD100/120 (unconfirmed)
 * 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.")
 * Player 5GB
 * Megaplayer 540, has firmware system/pp5020.mi4 including "PP5020AF..." string, it has been sold in Germany as Medion MD81034 by
 * , all variations, including the 5GB, 6GB, and 20GB models
 * R-1 (displays "Powered by PortalPlay Inc. 1999-2004")
 * Microtrack ver.1 (string "pp5020d-tf")
 * MR-100

PortalPlayer 5021C-TDF
Used by the following devices:
 * Apple Computer: 1st-generation iPod nano and 5th-generation iPod with video

PortalPlayer 5022
SRAM is no longer partitioned into fast and slower banks; all have uniform access speed. Used by:
 * Apple Computer: 2nd-generation iPod mini
 * HDD1630/HDD6320/HDD6330 > PP 5022 + codec Wolfson WM8731L

PortalPlayer 5024
PP5022 with integrated AS3514 DAC and power management chip. Used by:
 * SA9200
 * SA9200

PortalPlayer APX
PortalPlayer's application processor series. Used by:
 * Microsoft
 * Early Nvidia mobile processors