Stream Processors, Inc. Sets Price-Performance Standard With Digital Signal Processor for Emerging Video Applications.New Storm-1 SP8LP Eliminates Compromises Associated With Existing Silicon Solutions for Prosumer Video and IP Video Surveillance Applications LAS VEGAS -- Designed to eliminate the cost, power and processing performance compromises that have impeded innovation within emerging video applications, Stream Processors, Inc. (SPI) today announced the newest member of its Storm-1[TM] family of data-parallel digital signal processors (DSPs) - the Storm-1 SP8LP. The Storm-1 SP8LP was specifically designed for power and price sensitive applications that need the flexibility of software programmability, such as professional grade video surveillance and analytics systems, video conferencing and prosumer camcorders. Setting a new price-performance standard, the Storm-1 SP8LP delivers programmable performance of 16,000 MMACs (million multiplications and accumulations per second) while consuming less than 0.1 milliwatt mil·li·watt n. Abbr. mW A unit of power equal to one thousandth (10-3) of a watt. Noun 1. milliwatt - a unit of power equal to one thousandth of a watt per MMAC MMAC Multimedia Mobile Access Communication MMAC Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce MMAC Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center MMAC Mutated in Multiple Advanced Cancers MMAC Multi Media Access Center (Cabletron) . A single Storm-1 SP8LP is capable of real-time multi-codec/multi-stream encoding such as H.264 Scalable Video Coding Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is the name given to a video compression standard developed jointly by ITU-T and ISO. These two groups created the Joint Video Team (JVT) to develop the H.264 standard, or MPEG4 AVC (ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10 AVC). (SVC (1) (Switched Virtual Circuit) A network connection that is established at the time the transmission is required and disconnected when the session is completed. ) while still having enough processing headroom to run robust rules-based video analytics, advanced image sensor processing and audio encoding. Importantly, full software programmability enables customer-specific enhancements, faster time to market and the flexibility to support evolving industry standards. "Next generation IP video surveillance systems require ever increasing levels of smarts, flexibility and manageability," said Bengt Christensson, video surveillance industry veteran and vice president of business development for SPI. "With SP8LP, software flexibility is combined with performance, eliminating the difficult tradeoffs previously associated with using fixed-function ASSP (Application Specific Standard Part) An ASIC chip that is designed as a generic device for a particular market. Whereas an ASIC is typically used only by its creator, ASSPs are used by many different companies in the design of their products. See ASIC. or traditional DSP solutions, further enabling innovation in this rapidly evolving market." The Storm-1 SP8LP: Flexibility and Performance Combined Based on the company's breakthrough SPI Stream Processor Architecture([TM]), the Storm-1 SP8LP is the newest addition to the Storm-1 family. The device features a MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) The execution speed of a computer. For example, .5 MIPS is 500,000 instructions per second; 100 MIPS is a hundred million instructions per second. 32[R] 4KEc([R]) CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. core for system tasks, a DSP coprocessor subsystem that contains a second MIPS32 4KEc CPU core and a high-performance data-parallel unit (DPU) with eight lanes that have five 32-bit arithmetic logic units (ALUs) each. Each ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) The high-speed CPU circuit that does calculating and comparing. Numbers are transferred from memory into the ALU for calculation, and the results are sent back into memory. Alphanumeric data are sent from memory into the ALU for comparing. contains a MAC unit and is capable of four 8-, two 16- or one 32-bit operation per cycle. Input and output data for each lane is managed by the compiler and on chip logic to maximize data bandwidth and simplify programming by eliminating the need to manually manage cache or direct memory access (DMA). A rich set of I/O includes Ethernet, PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). , I2C, I2S, UARTs, GPIO GPIO General Purpose Input/Output GPIO General Purpose Input Output , image sensor interface and BT.656/BT.1120 video ports. The Storm-1 IP Camera Reference Platform SPI's IP Camera Reference Platform is designed to assist evaluation and speed the development of IP camera designs based on the Storm-1 SP8LP. The reference platform consists of a hardware board with a high-resolution CMOS sensor interface, composite video input and a standard Ethernet connection. The platform also offers a software development kit (SDK) which includes a H.264 encoder application library, a plug-and-play media streaming framework, and a Linux environment with drivers, webserver and a RTSP (RealTime Streaming Protocol) An application layer protocol used to transmit streaming audio, video and 3D animation over the Internet. It enables the user's client software to provide remote control of the server with functions such as pause, rewind and fast stack. Price and Availability Storm-1 SP8LP is currently sampling with full production expected in the third quarter of 2007. The chip is housed in a 23 x 23 mm, 480-pin, plastic ball grid array “BGA” redirects here. For other uses, see BGA (disambiguation). A ball grid array (BGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging used for integrated circuits. (PBGA) and is implemented in 130 nm 1.0-volt standard CMOS process. The Storm-1 IP Camera Reference Platform is currently shipping and is available at a price of $4,995. High-volume pricing information for the SP8LP device is available on request. Additional information about the Storm-1 SP8LP, the Storm-1 IP Camera Reference Platform and SPI's RapiDev([TM]) tool suite can be found at http://www.streamprocessors.com/. About Stream Processors, Inc. Stream Processors, Inc. (SPI) is a privately held fabless semiconductor company A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry or "fab. delivering an innovative stream processing architecture that helps consumer and industrial companies accelerate product development cycles and dramatically reduce system development costs. SPI was founded in 2004 to address the new era of compute-intensive applications requiring radically increased levels of processor performance and power efficiency. The company's technology and products improve application productivity by making parallel processing easier to program and use. Additional information can be found at http://www.streamprocessors.com/. [c] Copyright Stream Processors, Inc. 2007. All rights reserved. Stream Processors, Inc., SPI Stream Processor Architecture, RapiDev, Storm-1 and SPI are trademarks of Stream Processors, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. |
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