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| Advantech’s DSPC-8681 |
Advantech, a global manufacturer of telecom computing blades and multi-core processor platforms, today announced the DSPC-8681 Multimedia Processing Engine (MPE) at the NAB Show® 2011. The new add-in card integrates four Texas InstrumentsTMS320C6678 multicore digital signal processors (DSPs), the PLX® ExpressLane™ PEX8624 PCIe switch, and the Xilinx XC3S200AN Spartan-3 FPGA to achieve the highest video performance level in a half-length PCIe form factor. The MPE is targeted at applications in digital media, test and measurement, communications, DSP farms, mission critical, high performance computing, medical imaging and industrial automation markets.
“The last year has shown a dramatic increase in the demand for high-quality, real-time video processing in multiple markets.” stated RT Lu, VP at Advantech’s recently formed Embedded Media and Smart Technology Group (EMST). “To keep up with demand, OEMs designing solutions based on mainstream commercial and industrial servers need the highest performing video processing technology on fast-to-deploy PCIe add-in cards. We designed the DSPC-8681 Multimedia Processing Engine to speed their time-to-market, with 32 DSP cores today scaling to 64 cores later this quarter.”
The TMS320C66x generation of multicore devices are the highest-performance fixed- and floating-point DSPs in the industry based on TI’s KeyStone multicore architecture. Each DSP also includes packet accelerator support for various transport plane protocols and a security accelerator engine that support a wide range of security and encryption standards including DES.
“Our scalable C66x multicore devices deliver five times the performance of any other DSP in the industry,” said John Warner, marketing director, multicore and multimedia infrastructure business, Texas Instruments. “TI’s C6678 DSP and Advantech’s DSPC-8681 offer multimedia developers an impressive 40 GHz cumulative DSP in a platform that is power efficient and easy to use.”
The DSPC-8681 includes Serial RapidIO and 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet daisy-chains for connecting all DSP devices. It offers industry-leading performance and supports a wide range of voice, audio and video codecs. The card can support 120 channels in a H.264 mobile video application (CIF, 30fps) and 60 channels in a content delivery network using H.264 (SD, 30fps). For HD Broadcast applications, the DSPC-8681 is capable of supporting 4 channels of AVCIntra-50, 10-bit, 4:2.0 at 60fps.
PLX Technology’s PEX8624 PCIe switch on the card features 24 lanes and six highly configurable ports, with each lane delivering high-performance 5Gbps bidirectional fan-out both on and off the card. Each of TI’s four C6678 DSP devices on the DSPC-8681 are connected by two separate PCI Express lanes via the PEX8624, thus enabling up to 10Gbps non-blocking throughput.
“Our PEX8624 switch, which features the industry’s lowest latency and power, enables designers to add scalable, high-bandwidth, interconnection in a wide variety of systems, including workstations, storage systems and communications platforms,” said Krishna Mallampati, director of marketing for PCIe switches at PLX. “TI’s high-performance C66x multicore DSP devices used on the Advantech DSPC-8681 are enhanced by PCI Express Gen2 speeds to meet the integration requirements of a growing range of cross-sector applications.”
“At NAB we are focused on OEMs working on the creation, management, distribution and delivery of digital media and exciting applications such as 3D video, interactive TV, digital signage and evolving technologies for streaming HD video delivery,” stated RT Lu. “The DSPC-8681 is designed specifically to enable delivery of any content to any user and at the same time maintain high utilization and efficiency of the hardware resources.”
“We also believe that the DSPC-8681 is a perfect fit for applications in many other industries such as video-surveillance, medical, bioinformatics, radar, sonar and instrumentation. The card, when coupled with a general purpose processor platform, also provides unsurpassed fixed and floating point performance, making it unique in its genre.” concluded RT Lu.
Advantech is demonstrating a broad range of multi-core platform solutions in Booth SU 10417 (South Hall Upper) at the NAB Show, April 11-14 in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV, USA.