Texas Instruments Introduces First Single-chip, Real-time Hd Video Transcoding Solution

The DM6467 from Texas Instruments is specifically designed to address the HD transcoding challenge of commercial and consumer markets through its multi-core design that achieves a 10x performance increase over previous generation digital media processors. The DM6467 processor integrates the ARM and DSP core along with High-Definition Video/Imaging Co-Processors (HD-VICP), video data conversion engine and targeted video port interfaces. The HD-VICP offers more than three GHz of DSP processing power through dedicated accelerators for HD 1080i H.264 high profile transcoding, while the video data conversion engine manages video processing tasks, including downscaling, chroma sampling and menu overlay functionality. Less than 300 MHz of the DSP core is used to manage the multi-format video transcoding, leaving the rest of the DSP headroom available for additional application performance. While the DM6467 targets markets such as Media Gateways and MCUs where Transcoding is a requirement, the flexibility and efficiency of the DM6467 makes it attractive in applications where simultaneous HD encoding and decoding are required such as video telephony, or video security markets where multiple channels of standard definition encoding is important. The device also includes industry standard PCI bus and gigabit Ethernet among the connectivity peripherals.

The level of integration and optimization of the DM6467 also delivers this performance at up to one-tenth the cost of previous application systems while maintaining the flexibility needed to address multiple video formats in applications like multi-conferencing units (MCUs) and video security. In an MCU, for example, three 1 GHz TMS320C6415T DSPs per HD video channel are required for processing HD video at a cost of $507 per HD channel. With a DM6467-based MCU, the system is reduced to a single chip HD solution, reducing the per channel cost to $35.95. Furthermore, with the DM6467 handling the video transcoding, the system will require less power, less expensive DDR2 memory, reduced flash count and a smaller FPGA generating additional savings for the system bill of materials (BOM).

Video security systems will see similar BOM reductions and have the flexibility to implement multi-format multi-channel encode (up to four channels of MPEG4/H.264 MP D1 plus four secondary channels of MPEG4/H.264 MP CIF) or decode (up to six channels of MPEG4/H.264 MP D1) for hybrid digital video recorder (DVR) and server (DVS) systems. The DM6467 has an integrated C64x+ DSP which can accommodate video analytics or proprietary video processing algorithms. The DM6467 integrated ARM9, 10/100/1000 EMAC and ATA interfaces would eliminate the need for external host processor enabling a single chip DVR/DVS system.