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| Quartics Announces Flexible Video Chip |
By BDTI, 11/18/2009
 This month fabless semiconductor start-up Quartics introduced the QV1721, a video coprocessor SoC targeting applications such as netbook PCs, set-top boxes and high-definition televisions. The QV1721 is intended to be used to offload demanding video tasks from the main CPU in a system. The chip provides high-definition video encoding, decoding, and transcoding functions, along with post-processing to improve perceived video quality.
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| BDTI Releases Benchmark Results for Toshiba's Venezia Platform |
By BDTI, 4/22/2009
 BDTI recently completed a benchmark analysis of the Toshiba MeP “Media embedded Processor” core and “IVC2” SIMD coprocessor, both of which are used in Toshiba’s Venezia mobile multimedia platform.
The MeP is a licensable core that is intended to be used as a building block in multi-core, multimedia-oriented SoCs, typically with multiple MeP cores on a chip. Each MeP core can be customized with specialized instructions, co-processors, and memory sizes.
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| Xilinx Intros Spartan-6, Virtex-6; Promises App-Specific Development Support |
By BDTI, 2/18/2009
 Xilinx recently introduced two new FPGA chip families, Spartan-6 and Virtex-6, that offer increased capacity and lower power consumption relative to their predecessors. For the first time, the new Spartan and Virtex families use the same underlying architecture to enable easier migration. There are, however, differences in fabrication process and features. Spartan-6 chips will be fabbed in a 45 nm process, while Virtex-6 chips will be fabbed in 40 nm. Spartan-6 chips incorporate DDR3 integrated memory controllers and support for 3.3-volt I/O; Virtex-6 chips include specialized FIFO logic, tri-mode EMAC, and System Monitor. (The System Monitor is a debug and thermal management tool that was introduced in Virtex-5.)
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| Fraunhofer Stealthily Advances Compression Technologies |
By BDTI, 9/17/2008
 There’s a German research institution that many people outside of Europe have never heard of. Well, there are probably lots of German research institutions that many people have never heard of, but this particular one, Fraunhofer, was instrumental in developing a technology that millions of people use every day—a little thing called MP3. Fraunhofer also co-developed AAC and has been involved in developing the H.264 video codec, along with other codecs. But unlike the audio algorithm experts at Dolby, whose brand is visible on home audio equipment and whose name is nearly synonymous with high-quality audio, Fraunhofer has kept a relatively low profile. That’s because it has a somewhat unusual business model and history.
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| Eutecus Moves Video Analytics into Surveillance Cameras |
By BDTI, 6/18/2008
 Digital video has become a killer app for signal processing technologies, and video analytics—that is, analysis of digital video to identify specific events or characteristics—is quickly becoming a significant driver in digital video. Video analytics isn’t one of those solutions looking for a problem; it has an enormous range of potential applications, both commercial (such as intelligent surveillance and traffic monitoring) and military (such as target detection and tracking).
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| 3DLabs Aims Massively Parallel Chips at Portable Multimedia |
By BDTI, 4/23/2008
 When people talk about massively parallel, multicore chips, they’re usually talking about chips for high-performance line-powered applications, like WiMAX base stations or desktop video processing. But 3DLabs is headed in a different direction. The fabless chip company offers a massively parallel media processor, the DMS-02, which the company says is a perfect fit for portable multimedia devices with demanding video and audio processing requirements—such as high-end cellular handsets and portable media players. According to 3DLabs, the chip is in full production and costs $40 in small (1K) quantities. The company is currently shipping chips to initial customers, including a video surveillance equipment vendor, Grandeye.
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| Hantro 8190 Will Bring YouTube to Cell Phones |
By BDTI, 3/19/2008
 A few months ago, video codec vendor On2 announced its acquisition of Hantro, a company that offers licensable video codec accelerators and software. At the Mobile World Congress in February, On2 unveiled the first offspring from the marriage—the Hantro 8190 licensable silicon IP core.
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| Ambric’s Video Accelerator Card Tackles HD H.264 |
By BDTI, 2/27/2008
 At Macworld last month, Ambric announced that it is using its massively parallel processor architecture as the basis for PC plug-in video accelerator boards. The new video platform is based on Ambric’s AM2045 programmable processor chip and includes off-the-shelf video codec software written by video codec house MainConcept (which was acquired by DivX late last year).
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response— How to Make Money in Video IP |
By Jeff Bier, 2/27/2008
Digital video is almost everywhere. And where it isn’t now, it soon will be. As a result, the market for digital video intellectual property components—hardware, software, you name it—is wide open, with lots of opportunities for money-making. And there are roughly five buzillion vendors jockeying for position within a highly fragmented field.
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| Behind the scenes: Dolby’s acquisition of Coding Technologies |
By BDTI, 12/19/2007
 Dolby, based in San Francisco, CA, has acquired audio compression specialist Coding Technologies. Dolby is well-known for its AC-3 audio compression algorithm (also known as Dolby Digital), used worldwide in cinema sound and more recently accepted for audio for digital television in North America. Coding Technologies focuses on audio compression for mobile, digital broadcasting and Internet markets worldwide.
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