Xilinx announced the release of application-optimized Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions for the development of multimedia, video and imaging (MVI) systems. The MVI-tailored solutions represent the first in a series of products to be introduced with the Xilinx XtremeDSP roadmap: Video Starter Kit Virtex-4 SX35 (VSK-4VSX35) featuring a streamlined version of the new 8.1i System Generator for DSP tool suite; Video co-processing XEVM642 development kit; and new MPEG4 encoder and decoder intellectual property (IP) cores.
Xilinx MVI solutions provide the programmable hardware platforms, design tools, IP and reference designs needed to kick start development of real-time video and image processing systems for a wide variety of applications, such as video broadcasting and video conferencing, surveillance cameras, medical imaging, home gateway and digital TV. These platforms can be used to develop high performance, arithmetic-intensive algorithms that are offloaded from DSP processors to boost overall system performance through efficient co-processing strategies.
The VSK-4VSX35 kit is a development environment that enables developers to build and deploy video systems. Hardware components include the: Xilinx ML402-SX35 development board and video IO daughter card (VIODC); CMOS image sensor camera; cables and power adapters, as well as complete user documentation and reference designs.
The kit integrates limited edition releases of the System Generator for DSP and Integrated Software Environment (ISE) FPGA design tools. It also supports a wide variety of standard video interfaces such as DVI, Component Video, S-Video and SDI to facilitate video and multimedia demonstration, video algorithm development, and system integration and test.
The Video Co-Processing Kit provides a Xilinx daughter card for the Texas Instruments DM642 EVM platform. The dedicated daughter card accelerates the DSP capability of the DM642 processor with the Virtex-4 SX35 XtremeDSP engine capable of processing 77 GMACs per second. This creates a powerful DSP/FPGA co-processing platform for taking DM642 designs to higher performance levels, which enables designers to achieve higher resolutions, process multiple video streams simultaneously, and implement in real time highly complex video codecs for standard definition and/or high definition H.264 applications. The kit also provides developers with complete documentation and reference designs to jump start development.
The MPEG4 part 2 encoder/decoder cores can handle scalable resolutions up to D1 (720 x 486) at 30 frames per second. Additionally, a host processor interface makes these cores ideal for system-on-chip integration across a broad range of MVI applications.
The Xilinx Video Starter Kit Virtex-4 SX35 (VSK-4VSX35) and Video Co-Processing XEVM642 Development Kit will be available within 30 days for $1,495 and $1,995 US, respectively. The Xilinx MPEG4 IP cores are also immediately available, priced separately at $20,000 for the decoder and $25,000 encoder options.
