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Attending DAC in a Challenging Year
I know economic times are tough world-wide, and many of our regular customers have experienced project delays and even layoffs. This year's Design Automation Conference crystallizes the situation for the EDA/IP world, and it's expected to be a smaller, less exuberant event than normal. Exhibiting at DAC is a pretty significant expense, and many companies have chosen not to. We still are—our fifteenth year there!—because we believe that enabling designers with "IP that Works" can truly help smart companies innovate their way out of this recession. We also enjoy the unusual chance DAC provides to catch up with customers and hear more about how designers and their teams make good use of IP. Sure, there are some great digital ways to keep in touch these days (you can now follow us on Twitter, for example) but nothing beats the face-to-face DAC conversations over the years that have helped shaped CAST's laser-sharp focus on customer satisfaction. We're in booth number 1421 this year, and we have some exciting things going on (check out the rest of this issue). We hope you're able to come to the conference, and will stop by to see us. Give me a call or email if you'd like to schedule a meeting. -- Hal Barbour, president Beautiful Compressed Video with Our New H.264 Encoder CoreWe're very proud to announce a new version of our H.264 encoder core, one that produces some of the best quality video you'll see anywhere.
We set two goals for this new H264-BP-E core: video quality that rivals industry benchmarks, and support for the relatively simple Baseline Profile so it uses minimal hardware resources.
We've run hundreds of tests with a wide variety of video clips measuring the quality of this encoder against the industry-standard software reference model (called JM). Get a taste of these benchmarks on our website, then contact us to learn more. We can even give you a software bit-accurate model (BAM) and tips on testing the encoder with your own video clips. Or stop by our DAC booth to see live hardware demos of the encoder in action. We think you'll be very impressed by this latest product from our development partners and graphics experts Alma Technologies, in Greece.They also do our advanced JPEG 2000 and other image compression cores, and their deep expertise combined with our experience helping hundreds of diverse customers succeed with IP can't be beat. 8051s Still Going StrongThe newest compact 32-bit processors certainly have their benefits, but we're not seeing much slowdown in the venerable 8051 market. Our family of satisfied 8051 customers moved closer to 200 licenses with three new sales so far this month, including our ultra-small T8051 going into a mobile TV product and our ultra-fast R8051XC-2 with an I2C controller for an FPGA-based system. 8051s have a great development ecosystem and we offer them several different ways, with options including efficient on-chip debug plus reference design boards and other development aids. Contact us or stop by at DAC to see if you might save yourself some time and money by building one or more 8051s into your next SoC. Get in touchGive us a call (+1-201-391-8300) or email if you'd like to comment on anything in this issue, or just to learn more about how our line of over 100 cores can work for you. |
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In this issue ...A Free DAC Lunch with IP ConstellationsEven though we offer about 100 different IP cores and Platform IP products, there are still some products we don't carry. That's why we were happy recently to be founding members of the IP Constellations Program organized by our friends at IP-Extreme.
Constellations unites CAST with several other IP providers with diverse interests and product lines. If you need something we don't carry, we can help connect you with a trusted Constellations partner who does. Learn more in this free lunch and talk at DAC, with a keynote by EDA pro Jm Hogan: IP Constellations: The Changing Face of the IP Industry Register now if you think you might attend! Win Your Own H.264 Encoder!
Twitter for EDA & DACThere's a growing group of editors, bloggers, vendors, and yes, even actual designers, communicating via Twitter. Are you using it yet? You can follow us as castcores. Some hashtags you'll find useful are #eda, #semIP, and #46dac. We'll be doing frequent updates from DAC, so follow along if you can't make it. |
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We first introduced H.264 IP in 2005, and learned that not everyone is interested in digital commercial broadcasting. If you're instead looking to harness the elegant power of H.264 video compression for military, industrial, surveillance, or other applications, then this is the encoder core for you.
The result is a core we're proud to compare to anyone other, and in fact we invite you to do the same.
Stop by our DAC booth, get scanned, and you'll be eligible to win a
