Date: 7th Jan 2010

Single Chip H.264 Processors from Cavium for volume production of wireless displays

Cavium Networks has unveiled a new family of full HD (1080p60) system-on-a-chip (SoC) PureVu single chip H.264 processors for mass market adoption in wireless displays, home video streaming, and video conferencing.
The PureVu CNW5XXX family with Cavium's Super-Low-Latency (SLL) H.264 video processor offers built-in security, and intelligent networking and packet processing features in a fully integrated SoC enabling wireless streaming of HD video in variety of video applications, including wireless display, HDMI cable replacement, home media distribution, and video conferencing.
High level of integration reduces external component count to keep the cost low and enable mass market adoption in devices such as flat panel TVs, Blu-ray players, notebook PCs and netbooks, gaming consoles, as well as SMB and SOHO video communication systems.

Cavium says, the consumer desire for instant access to high definition content, whether streamed from the internet or stored on different CE devices including Blu-ray players, smart phones, STB DVRs, and PCs, for viewing anywhere in the home on various displays such as HDTVs and PC/laptop monitors is driving the demand for wired and wireless home video distribution and interactive content delivery.

"The market adoption of our PureVu video co-processors has been phenomenal since we introduced the CNW3XXX family in early 2008", said Lars Herlitz, GM of the Multimedia Group at Cavium. "We expect the high integration, low power consumption and aggressive BOM cost structure of the newly introduced CNW5XXX video processor family to help our customers drive significant growth in wireless display, home video distribution, and video conferencing market segments."

PureVu CNW5XXX SoC Family Key Features:

High Performance Processing: PureVu H.264 codec engine with up to 1920x1080p60 (1920x1200p60 for PC applications) encoding or decoding performance and integrated Super Low Latency (SLL) technology enabling 1ms encoding and 1ms decoding capability. The encoder and decoder engines are equipped with advanced error resiliency techniques to eliminate artifacts due to transmission errors. The codec engine and the pre- and post-processing modules have been optimized for handling contents such as movies, text and graphics.

Dual ARM11 MPCore processors operating at up to 500MHz, each with 32KB I-cache, 32KB D-cache and a large 128KB L2 cache. Each ARM11 MPCore processor comes with instruction set extensions for Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and Media Processing, and integrates a Vector Floating Point unit (VFP) and Memory Management Unit (MMU).

Security technology includes Nitrox hardware crypto engine with public key processing and bulk data encryption and decryption blocks for content protection such as HDCP 2.0 support, as well as a 2D graphics engine for enhanced graphical user interface

Interfaces include single-lane PCI-express controller and PHY, USB 2.0 host and device controller and PHY, Gigabit Ethernet MAC, and other common peripheral interfaces including GPIO, SPI, UART, I2S, and I2C. The video ports support bi-directional 24-bit RGB/4:4:4 or 8/16-bit YUV/4:2:2 ITU-R BT.1120/656 connectivity to directly interface with commonly available HDMI transceivers, as well as component and composite inputs and outputs.

CNW5XXX's integrated Quality of Service (QoS) mechanism, called SMART (Secure Minimum-latency Adaptation and Reliable Transmission), employs intelligent rate adaptation and error resiliency techniques to enable smooth and reliable content delivery over a wide range of standards-based wired and wireless networks, such as WiFi 802.11n, Powerline, and MoCA. The built-in QoS module monitors key transmission channel statistics and optimizes the behavior of the PureVu codec engine for best user experience. This QoS functionality is one of CNW5XXX's key differentiating technologies that enable reliable, secure and long-range transmission of high quality, 1080p60 content.

The different devices offered as part of this family are:
CNW5602 is a dual-port, encode/decode SoC is ideal for external stand-alone transmitter and receiver dongle designs for enabling existing CE home devices with WiFi display technology.
CNW5621 is single-port, encode-only variant, operates in a co-processor mode and has the size and the power characteristics suitable for integration into notebook PCs and netbooks.
CNW5611: The display side is addressed using a single-port, decode-only SoC that can seamlessly integrate into an existing TV design and handle both video and data traffic slated for the main TV processor.
CNW5102: This dual-port device offers full-duplex H.264 encode-decode capability (up to 1080p30 in full-duplex mode), integrated audio and speech processing, advanced user interface capabilities through the on-board 2D graphics accelerator, and a rich set of networking and peripheral interfaces including USB, Gigabit Ethernet, and PCI-express.

"The wireless display and HDMI cable replacement applications have become the next digital home battle ground for various video processing and wireless networking technologies," said Michelle Abraham, principal analyst at In-Stat. "But when the dust settles, given the compatibility and scalability required to support this emerging market's expected growth, solutions using standards-based video and networking technologies will have the best chance of succeeding. Cavium's strategy with their new SoC family positions them well to be a driving force in shaping this growth."

This family of processors to sample in 1st quarter of year 2010.

Cavium has also made available a Ultra Compact Display MiniCard (DMC) based on the above video processor Family for for Notebook PCs (NBPC) and Netbooks

Cavium says this is different from the software based solutions that suffer from low encoding performance, high latency, and high power consumption, the new DMC module from Cavium offers high resolution encoding up to 1920x1200p60, HDCP 2.0 encryption and authentication for Hollywood quality content protection, at a latency that meets the most stringent requirements for gaming applications.

"Cutting the HD cord in consumer electronics and exploring a world with wireless displays and fewer cables is perhaps one of the most prevalent trends in the CE space today," said Randy Lawson, senior analyst at iSuppli. "Rapid adoption of wireless display technology will depend on how successful CE manufacturers are in bringing all the benefits of this technology without adversely impacting the user experience. Cavium's new netHD-based Display MiniCard module is another good example of innovative products being brought to the CE market to provide consumers with a wider option of video source devices and content."

To know more visit: http://www.caviumnetworks.com