New Video Compressor and Camera Processor Cores Expand CAST's IP Line

WOODCLIFF LAKE, NJ USA, January 18 2017 -- CAST, Inc. recently added two media processing cores to its extensive line of semiconductor intellectual property cores and subsystems.

• The H.264-E-HIS High 10 Intra Profile Encoder Core is a low-power video compressor that rivals the quality produced by larger Motion JPEG2000 compressors and exceeds the quality of Motion JPEG compressors.
• The CAMFE Camera Front-End Processor Core offers a flexible, resource-efficient means to convert the raw pixel data from a CMOS or CCD sensor to a video stream ready for display, processing, or compression.

“These new cores reflect our dedication to giving system designers a variety of sophisticated yet easy-to-use image and video IP options so they can choose and successfully implement the best technology for their specific application,” said Nikos Zervas, chief executive officer of CAST.

The High 10 Intra Encoder Core is an efficient intra-frame compression engine that supports the High 10 Intra profile of the ISO/IEC 14496-10/ITU-T H.264 standard. Suitable for applications needing moderate levels of compression, it produces Variable- or Constant-Bit Rate video that features high error resilience, allows for random access in the compressed stream, and eases video editing. It has a small silicon footprint—approximately 120K gates and 420K bits of SRAM—and requires no external memory (e.g. off-chip DRAM), allowing for very cost-effective and low-power ASIC or FPGA implementations.

The H264-E-HIS rounds out CAST’s comprehensive family of video and image compression IP, providing one of the best available choices for easily implementing compression and decompression for Internet of Things and many other applications.

The CAMFE Camera Front-End Processor Core accepts the raw pixel output from an image sensor and produces standard RGB video ready for compression or other uses. The processor converts the Bayer pattern sensor output—via de-mosaicing interpolation and white balancing—and optionally optimizes the video with Contrast Stretching (Normalization), Gamma Correction, and Sharpening. Sourced from Ocean Logic, it adds to CAST’s line of graphics-related companion cores and subsystems that work alone or with compression IP.

(Click to see a higher-resolution version.)

CAMFE image processing example.

The H264-E-HIS and CAMFE Cores are available now. Visit www.cast-inc.com or contact CAST Sales (info@cast-inc,com, +1 201.391.8300) to learn more.