Altera Demos 4K Reference Design

Altera Corp. is showcasing what it claims to be the industry’s first single-chip 4K, format-conversion reference design with integrated serial digital interface (SDI) at the IBC2010 at the RAI Center in Amsterdam.

Altera's 4K reference design includes the Video Design Framework that enables the fastest design cycle for video applications. This includes the Video and Image Processing (VIP) Suite with MegaCore functions that facilitate the development of custom video and image processing designs. Also included is the hardware demonstration on a Stratix IV GX A/V Kit for affordable 4K video capture, editing, playback, format conversion and projection solutions, the Nios II embedded processor, a multi-port front-end DDR3 memory controller and the integrated SDI. This combined functionality of the broadcast-quality 4K reference design accelerates customer time to market by combining an optimized video design tool flow to support 4K resolution and 3D processing.

4K resolution is rapidly becoming the next major enhancement in video because of the benefits in picture clarity and realism. Many leading projector, broadcast and camera OEMs are either shipping systems today or will by the end of this year. Altera enables this next generation of applications by reducing the overall system chip count, which lowers the overall bill of materials costs of the end product, as well as lowering the cost of development and simplifying board design. Previous systems required as many as nine off-the-shelf chips to perform 4K format conversion (four 1080p format conversion chips and five chips for SDI input and output). Using Altera’s 4K format conversion reference design based on a single Stratix IV EP4SGX230 FPGA, these functions can be easily integrated with ample headroom remaining to incorporate other video I/Os such as DisplayPort and video compression (encoding/decoding) processing. Christie/Vista Systems is an early adopter of this technology.

Altera

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