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NUON
The DVD-N2000 Nuon player made by Samsung with pack-in controller
Nuon (stylized as NUON) is a technology developed by VM Labs that adds features to a DVD player. In addition to viewing DVDs, one can play 3D video games and use enhanced DVD navigational tools such as zoom and smooth scanning of DVD playback. One could also play CDs while the Nuon graphics processor generates synchronized graphics on the screen. There were plans to provide Internet access capability in the next generation of Nuon-equipped DVD players.
When it was first announced, the Nuon's creators envisioned it as a competitor for the upcoming video game consoles from the leading manufacturers.[3] However, the Nuon platform was primarily marketed as an expanded DVD format. A large majority of Nuon players that were sold in fact resembled typical consumer DVD players with the only noticeable difference being a Nuon logo. Nuon players offered a number of features that were not available on other DVD players when playing standard DVD-formatted titles. These included very smooth forward and reverse functionality and the ability to smoothly zoom in and out of sections of the video image. In addition, Nuon provided a software platform to DVD authors to provide interactive software like features to their titles.
In North America, Nuon was used in the Samsung DVD-N501 and DVD-N2000 models; they also released several models in other parts of the world: DVD-N504 (Europe), DVD N505 (Europe), and DVD-N591 (Korea). Toshiba released the SD-2300 DVD player, and there are two RCA models, the DRC300N and DRC480N. The Nuon was also used in Motorola's Streamaster 5000 "Digital DNA" set-top box.
Nuon was created by VM Labs, whose assets were sold to Genesis Microchip in April 2002.[7] By November 2004, there were no Nuon-enabled DVD players shipping and no new Nuon software titles released or in development.
Specification
The Inside of the Samsung N2000 player, showing the Nuon XCMMP-L3BZPDVD processor
Four 128-bit 54 MHz or 108 MHz Nuon MPE (Media Processing Element) very long instruction word processors supporting parallel operations on (at most) 32-bit scalars. An MPE's register file contains eight 128-bit registers, which can be used to store vectors of that size (composed of 4 scalars), or be partitioned down to offer thirty-two 32-bit (scalar) registers, or eight packets of 3 (pixel) or 4 ("small") 16-bit vectors. Each MPE operates on RAM that is local to itself, but MPEs 1 and 4 can directly operate on data located in system memory. Those same specific MPEs can use their memories as configurable caches, and have access to additional tag RAM for that purpose. MPEs have a hardware multiply unit, but no hardware division. There is no hardware support for floating point computation.[8] Some report(s)[by whom?] suggested that a certain model had sported a 333+ MHz clock frequency but it was never released widely.
Merlin Racing (Later had a sequel entitled Miracle Space Race for the PlayStation), and an altered version called Rascal Racers; released for PlayStation in 2002.
In late 2001, VM Labs released an SDK which allowed developers to program apps/games for their Nuon system. Only the Samsung DVD-N501/DVDN504/DVDN505 and RCA DRC300N/DRC480N can load homebrew games.
Some homebrew titles have been created for or ported to Nuon. They are not commercially available and require the user to burn the material to a Nuon-compatible CD-R.
"A Fan’s History – The NUON" blog post at arcryphongames.wordpress.com (Dated February 22, 2015. It has a copious amount of embedded video links and media shots.)
