German video IP and solution provider Videantis has introduced a unified vision and video coding solution for mobile, home and automotive applications. The solution combines the company’s low-power, scalable v-MP4000HDX processor IP core family with an accelerated OpenCV library, and a suite of Full HD and 4k video encoders and decoders.
In automotive applications, the company’s low-delay, high dynamic range video codecs combined with computer vision techniques enable both camera-based advanced driver assistance systems and surround-view cameras to prevent collisions.
The high-performance, low-power flexible video processing subsystem, v-MP4000HDX, can run computationally demanding algorithms with low power consumption. This same architecture also supports video compression and decompression, so that the system can simultaneously decompress, analyse and compress video data.
The OpenCV library has been optimised for the v-MP4000HDX architecture and combined with Videantis’ video codecs, so they’re able to run concurrently.
The v-MP4180HDX subsystem performs 192 16-bit pixel operations per cycle, 24 on each of its eight two-issue VLIW media processors. This subsystem is less than 2mm2 of silicon in 28nm technology, including memories. With four media processors, the v-MP4140HDX subsystem performs 96 16-bit pixel operations per cycle. This subsystem is less than 1mm2 of silicon in 28nm technology, including memories. Thanks to its flexible architecture, the subsystem can run video codecs, imaging, computer vision, and computational photography algorithms all simultaneously.
The v-MP4000HDX accelerates OpenCV computer vision libraries. Using OpenCV, algorithm development can take place in a standard PC-based environment. Once algorithm development and testing are completed, the application can be migrated onto an embedded Videantis-enabled platform where the OpenCV function calls are accelerated by the v-MP4000HDX subsystem. This acceleration results in a speedup of more than 100 times compared to running on the host CPU, and power consumption 1,000 times lower. The v-MP4000HDX therefore supports full HD processing, allowing for more accurate algorithms and an overall higher-quality user experience.
