Argon Design Releases Argon Streams AV1

Argon Streams AV1 provides comprehensive verification that AV1 decoders fully comply with the complete AV1 Specification.

13^th August 2018 – Cambridge, UK – Argon Design Ltd, known for its award-winning family of advanced video verification solutions, announced today that it has released Argon Streams AV1. This release coincides with the formal release of the AV1 Bitstream and Decoding Process Specification by the industry wide consortium Alliance for Open Media.

AV1 is the new open source and royalty-free video codec for next-generation Ultra High Definition video compression and delivery over the web. It is designed to meet growing Internet demand for top-quality video scenarios across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.

Argon Design has been contributing to the development of the AV1 codec for over 3 years, adding features, suggesting novel encoder tools, helping with debugging the reference code, improving codec performance and also writing the AV1 Specification for AOMedia.

“During our development of the AV1 Specification, we have been using Argon Streams AV1 to verify that the written specification is an accurate representation of the AV1 reference code. By using those same verification bit-streams, our Argon Streams AV1 customers, can verify that their own AV1 decoder designs are fully compatible with both the AV1 Specification and the AV1 Reference Code.”, explained Alan Scott, CEO of Argon Design.

Adrian Grange, chairman of AOM's AV1 Codec Working Group stated that “Using Argon Streams AV1 during the final few months of development has ensured that the AV1 Specification and Reference Code are bit accurate with each other – which is probably an industry first for the release of a new video codec”.

“Arm has been very involved in the development of the AV1 specification, and we’re already using Argon Streams for our previous generation video IP to accelerate our development,” said Olof Dellien, senior director of engineering, Arm. “Utilizing Argon streams for AV1 reduces our time to market and ensures that our decoder is high quality, bit accurate, and fully conformant to the specification.”

“AMD engaged with Argon Design early in our AV1 decoder development, which started ahead of the final specification freeze in order to enable an aggressive time-to-market.” stated Gordon Kerr, IP Design Director at AMD. “Argon has been an invaluable partner in AMD’s drive to deliver our next generation low power and high performance video codec engine, and is an important part of AMD’s strategy to ensure full compliance with the latest AV1 specification.”

Along with many of the AOMedia Founder and Promoter Members, several other Semiconductor companies have also been tracking the AV1 development. For example MediaTek in Taiwan are already working on AV1 and are one of many early adopters of Argon Streams AV1.

Argon Streams is a family of conformance test bit-streams providing full coverage and verification of HEVC/H.265, VP9 and AV1 video decoders. The bit-streams are derived directly from the specification using Argon Design’s advanced compiler technology. The process uses directed random numbers to ensure that the bit-streams provide comprehensive coverage of all branches, functions, value ranges and cross coverage combinations in the complete specification.

Argon Streams is supported worldwide by CamverTech. For more information contact your local CamverTech sales representative, or email streams@argondesign.com.