DSPs and FPGAs combine to host video development

Platform offers original equipment manufacturers a complete, integrated solution for digital video development.

Responding to the need for higher bandwidth in high-definition video applications for broadcast, video surveillance and compression technologies, Sundance Multiprocessor Technology has unveiled its high-performance Digital Video Infrastructure Platform (DVIP).

The platform offers original equipment manufacturers a complete, integrated solution for digital video development.

Built on Sundance's modular and infinitely scalable multiprocessing concept, the DVIP leverages the performance and flexibility of two Texas Instruments TMS320C6455 digital signal processors (DSP) and a TMS320DM642 DSP-based digital media processor.

The 1GHz C6455 DSPs allow multiple processors to be connected via a Serial RapidIO (SRIO) interface, a concept that is well suited to Sundance's modular hardware.

Additionally, the infrastructure platform incorporates Xilinx Virtex-4 FX60 FPGAs with the capacity to implement IP cores from leading compression suppliers to perform real-time encoding and decoding.

The modular architecture of the DVIP allows OEM customers to increase the processing performance in the field and add one of more than 40 additional variant modules that support the Sundance TIM (Texas Instruments Module) standard.

As this standard is open-domain, it is also possible to integrate proprietary solutions.

"TI is seeing an increasing demand for commercial-off-the-shelf OEM solutions that use our leading-edge digital multimedia DSPs, and Sundance's DVIP supports a range of demanding applications therein", says Andy Richardson, Business Development Manager, TI.

"The TMS320C6455 DSPs add a level of scalability to the DVIP that will make it a popular development environment for OEMs".

The interface to end equipment is handled by two PowerPC 405 general-purpose processors that can be found at the core of the Virtex-4 FPGA.

The factory default options are high-speed USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s), 1Gbit/s Ethernet and LVDS for display.

RS485 and IP cores can be sourced for FireWire, SATA (hard disk interface), PCI Express, and other I/O standards or bespoke interfaces.

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