Monday, November 14, 2011

Better Technology Top to Bottom: The Telairity Edge

As a leading manufacturer and marketer of video processing solutions for broadcast and professional video applications, Telairity is committed to the development of cutting-edge technology. Our H.264/AVC advanced video compression systems continue to provide the lowest latency and highest compression in the industry, making them ideal choices for a range of remote/field applications. But not all professional broadcast encoder technologies are created equal.

For the most part, companies that develop professional broadcast encoders fall into one of three groups, when considered in light of the technologies employed to develop systems.

•    Some companies adopt a commercial encoder chip (like the Ambarella A2), developed for a related but distinct and much higher volume market (e.g., cameras), and build encoders around that base “System on a Chip” (SoC) hardware platform.
•    Other companies adopt a general purpose CPU (like the latest Intel or AMD quad-core generation of x86 processor), and implement encoders in software on a PC hardware platform—perhaps using some add-in video accelerator board.
•    A third group of companies eschews both of these approaches (special-purpose SoCs or general-purpose CPUs), and develops encoders around some combination of commercially available DSPs (from vendors like TI) and FPGAs (from vendors like Xilinx).

Prominent among Telairity’s several distinctions is the fact that we use none of the technical strategies listed above for product development. Instead, we have leveraged our roots in the semiconductor industry, together with our patented technology for quickly developing complex ASICs with small hardware design teams, to create the 594 MHz Telairity T1P2000 video processor, targeted to video encoding.

Implemented in 90-nm technology, using Telairity’s proprietary design methodology, the T1P2000 video processor achieves high silicon density of over 150,000 gates/mm2. The device’s high level of integration, using a multicore architecture, minimizes the number of chips required for the application and also reduces the latency and bandwidth required for interchip communications, as all five cores share high-speed access to shared DRAM memory to maximize efficiency for video image processing.

In a rapidly changing broadcast industry, Telairity’s T1P2000 is the heart of our H.264 encoding technology, enabling us to develop innovative and efficient solutions to keep ahead of the curve. Tune in again soon for more about our proprietary technology. Until then, you can read more here.