Altera Showcases Broadcast Industry Leadership With Comprehensive Set of Technical Solutions and Customer Successes
NAB2005, Las Vegas, April 11, 2005—Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced today it will demonstrate the first compliant FPGA-based reference design for the AES3/EBU digital audio transmission protocol at the upcoming NAB2005, the annual National Association of Broadcasters Conference. The reference design features Altera’s Stratix® and Cycloneâ„¢ series of FPGAs, which deliver lower cost, greater flexibility, shorter design cycles, and enhanced features compared to ASSP-based solutions. The FPGAs can integrate multiple audio interfaces to become a multiple-port application host that can be embedded with other video broadcast applications. Altera’s AES3/EBU solution also incorporates the functionality of an entire system onto a single FPGA, eliminating the need for spreading tasks over multiple devices.
Altera’s NAB2005 exhibit (booth C11212) will also include demonstrations of cost-effective, performance-intensive video standards implemented in FPGAs, including video-over-internet protocol (IP). The Altera® video-over-IP reference design demonstrates transmission of MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) data over IP-based networks. The reference design functions as a bridge between one or more compressed video streams and IP packets carried over 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or one gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet. Next-generation compression schemes and industry-standard interfaces will also be on display.
“As the global audio and video market moves to all-digital broadcasting, professional broadcast equipment providers need to develop low-cost products supporting multiple audio/video formats, encoding/decoding schemes, and IT standards,†said Todd Scott, senior director of Altera’s digital consumer and broadcast business unit. “Our FPGA families deliver the flexible cost-effective solutions customers need to comply with rapidly evolving industry standards, enabling them to focus on their proprietary value-added design.â€
“Altera’s Cylone II FPGA was the key enabling tool that allowed us to develop our latest SATA-based RAID 6 storage array, the MediaVault 4212,†said Mike Anderson, chief engineer of Huge Systems, a Ciprico company. “The high density and high speed attributes of Cyclone II FPGAs allowed us to design a single chip RAID 6 controller that doubled the performance and reliability of the MediaVault 4212, affording up to two disk failures with full data recovery. This critical requirement is an absolute must-have in high-availability applications, making the MediaVault 4212 the new benchmark in high-performance, high-availability storage.â€
Altera’s support for the broadcast industry’s rapid adoption of programmable technology can be seen in several examples on display at NAB2005, including:
Company | Product(s) | Product Type(s) | Booth Number |
---|---|---|---|
DekTec | DTA-160, FantASI | Digital-Video PCI card, USB-2 adaptors | C7331, SU10006 (Sencore) |
Doremi Labs | V1-HD, V1-UHD, ORCA, Nugget, HDG-10 | HDTV disk recorders, HD-MPEG2 encoders and players, portable test generator | C2342 |
Euphonix | MC Edit | Audio workstation control surface | N3606 |
FOR-A | Broadcast products | Video and broadcast-related | C4519 |
Huge Systems, a Ciprico Company | MediaVault U320R, MediaVault U320RX, MediaVault 4212 | Disk arrays for media storage | SL3628 |
Inlet Technologies | Fathom | Professional encoding solution for VC-1 content distribution | SL5829 |
Panasonic Broadcast | AG-DVX100A, DVC60, AJ-HD3700B | Camcorders and HD/SD Mastering System | C3617 |
Pinnacle Systems | Deko 3000 HD, Liquid Edition Pro Breakout Box | High-definition character generator, Analog and digital video-to-USB converter | SU6341 |
SBS Technologies | Tsunami | FPGA-based PCI processor for high-performance computing | SU8959 |
Tiernan, a Radyne Company | HE4000, THE15A, TE6000, TDR6 | HD/SD video encoders and decoders | SU9929 |
To learn more about Altera’s broadcast solutions at NAB2005, visit www.altera.com/education/events/northamerica/evt-nab.html.
To see how customers have used Altera products in broadcast applications, visit www.altera.com/broadcastsuccess.
Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) is the world’s pioneer in system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions. Combining programmable logic technology with software tools, intellectual property, and technical services, Altera provides high-value programmable solutions to approximately 14,000 customers worldwide. More information is available at www.altera.com.
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