CAST COREspondance

Being Our Own Best IP Provider

The CAST team is well known for developing good IP products and providing great support and integration expertise. One way we keep these skills sharp is by continually building systems that use our own IP products, and living through the real-world integration issues and other challenges our customers also face.

A good example is our internal development effort to produce the H.264 Application Platform we recently announced.

The H264-AP Platform combines several of the cores we offer with custom IP and software we developed to form a complete, ready-to-run video compression package. It offers a quick, cost-effective way to try compression on your own clips, learn about H.264 in a systems context, or even get a head start building your own H.264 system.

Developing the H264-AP Platform involved CAST global team engineers from Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Greece, and four different US states. This tested the virtual organization tools and practices we've used for years, and the experience ended up strengthening the quality service and support we give to CAST customers.

The resulting product also seems to be a success; in fact CARERI, the Chinese Aeronautical Radio Electronics Institute,has already licensed the system to create a joint media lab with CAST in their facility. (Read about the interesting signing ceremony in China).

We'll be running the H.264 Application Platform—and a JPEG 2000 version— in our booth at DAC. Stop by to see us or let me know if you'd like more information.

-- Hal Barbour, President, +1 (201) 391-8300 ext. 111

Improved H.264 Video Encoder Core

The heart of our H264-AP Platform is a highly-effective H.264 Video Encoder core developed by our partners Alma Technologies. It already has a reputation for generating some of the most beautiful looking compressed video around. Now it's even better, with Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding and 40% faster performance.

Most video systems have a restricted bandwidth for transmitting compressed video. CBR works to always produce the best looking video that fits within that bandwidth, automatically varying the degree of compression with changes in image complexity.

Our method for doing the CBR is pretty advanced, and it works very well for a wide variety of video material and applications.

We've also taken care to encode the video stream so it works easily with standard video decoders, reducing the unexpected difficulties designers tend to encounter in system integration. (Customers are glad we also applied this same "total systems approach" to the core's use of external memory.)

The more flexible encoder core also needs less time to process each image sample. The faster processing that results means it can now compress full 1080p HD video—1920 by 1080 pixel frames at 30 frames per second—in smaller FPGAs such as the Altera Stratix® IV and Xilinx Virtex®-5 device families.

We think our H.264 Encoder with CBR runs as fast and produces better-looking video than any similar core out there. Compare for yourself: visit our DAC booth for a live demonstration, or email or call (+1 201.391.8300) to set one up.