VDC Research: Embedded Microprocessor, Board & Systems Market Blog

Intel Joins I3A in Effort to Capitalize on Mobile Imaging Applications

Earlier this week, the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A), a not-for-profit organization composed of various industry participants committed to the imaging industry, announced that Intel will join the association at the highest level of membership.  As a “Strategic member,” Intel can obtain a wide range of membership benefits offered by I3A, as well as influence the organization’s Mobile Imaging Interest Group and its Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative.  Interest Groups such as these follow markets and technologies of interest to their members, enabling development of industry standards and the cooperation necessary to solve challenges that may arise around imaging.  The Mobile Imaging Interest Group focuses efforts on promotion and enablement of mobile imaging innovations.  

Although other embedded processor suppliers, such as AMD and NVIDIA, have gained a competitive marketplace advantage in developing and commercializing CPU graphics capabilities, VDC believes Intel’s decision to join this association highlights the company’s interests in the rapidly-growing graphics and mobile imaging arena.  Additionally, although Intel’s initial mobile strategy seemed to be centered on the netbook market opportunity, VDC sees the company’s leadership in I3A’s Mobile Imaging Interest Group as a sign of Intel’s strategic expansion into the tablet and smartphone spaces.  I3A President Lisa Walker’s description of Intel as “an innovator in the semiconductor industry,” underscores a valid global perception of Intel given the company’s strong position in embedded silicon technology, its long-standing interest in wireless networking and mobility, and its significant resources worldwide.  So, while Intel may not currently have a significantly large presence in graphics processing, the company’s determination to more creatively target the graphics space through I3A membership should not be underestimated. 

The Advent of 4G: Advancements in LTE with Base Station on-a-Chip Solutions

On October 24, Cavium, Inc., a provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications, and the digital home, announced that it is demonstrating end-to-end carrier class solutions for 4G networks at the 4G World 2011 conference from October 25th through the 27th in Chicago.  Among Cavium's technology highlights:

OCTEON Fusion Demonstration: Cavium will be demonstrating its small cell "Base Station on a chip" technology. This completely over-the-air LTE demonstration will include eight simultaneous connections including streaming of five HD videos, delivering up to the maximum possible data throughput. The demonstration platform consists of a commercially available 4G/LTE client, an OCTEON Fusion Technology-based eNodeB base station, Cavium's FusionStack eNodeB software, and a commercial 4G/LTE EPC (Evolved Packet Core) solution.

Cavium and its partners will also be showcasing multiple LTE solutions based on several product lines:

OCTEON II Family of Multicore MIPS64 Processors:  Cavium's highest performance embedded processors, with up to 48GHz of single-chip compute and 50Gbps full-duplex traffic throughput with scalability up to 32-chips and 1024 real-cores. 

OCTEON II Accelerator Boards:  4 - 40 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet NICs designed for advanced and secure network services, compression, and pattern matching for 3G/LTE core networks.

Odyssey:  Cavium will be showcasing its multi-mode UE technology with the Odyssey CNO9xxx product line, in partnership with Aricent. 

Cavium Solutions and Services (CSS):  Cavium will also be highlighting a variety of software toolkits optimized for multi-core.

VDC views Cavium's announcements and demonstrations at 4G World this week as part of a larger inflection point in the general advancement of small-cell networks enabled by base station-on-chip technology.  Certainly, several other embedded processor suppliers have recently announced similar base station-on-a-chip concepts, including Freescale which announced earlier in 2011 the introduction of its QorIQ Converge base station-on-chip family. 

Over the next five years, service providers will need to find cost-effective ways to improve both network performance and geographic coverage.  VDC believes that more wireless network equipment suppliers will attempt to satisfy the demand for small-cell mobile network solutions from their service provider customers with the development of smaller footprint wireless infrastructure technologies. 

As a result,  VDC envisions embedded processor suppliers, such as Cavium, continuing to be presented with opportunities and challenges of how best to capitalize on an attractive, and dynamic, market opportunity with a comprehensive range of base station-on-a-chip hardware, software, and services.  Those suppliers that have an end-to-end solution perspective are typically better positioned to help enable wireless equipment providers to implement more sophisticated mobile connectivity capabilities. 

Emerging Applications for FPGA Technology: Altera Targets Next-Generation Video Analytics Market Opportunities

Altera Corporation on October 18th announced the release of a video analytics solution based around its Cyclone IV FPGA.  This product enables 1080 pixel HD video at a high frame rate of 30 fps. Incorporated alongside the Altera FPGA is Eutecus' multi-core Video Analytics engine (MVE) intellectual property (IP).  The FPGA device is targeted at a range of video surveillance applications, including traffic surveillance and security applications. Altera claims the video analytics' solution allows better management of user-defined rules, while not impeding performance.

VDC Research Group views video analytics as an emerging market segment with robust growth potential. In fact, VDC Research Group covered the FPGA market in its Embedded Processors: 2010-2014 Global Market Demand Analysis report and expects growth in the high teens for the overall FPGA market going forward. A portion of this growth will certainly come at expense of rival technologies like DSPs and ASICs.  In addition to the novel solutions that FPGAs are enabling, the increased flexibility and lower non-recurring engineering costs of FPGAs are also driving the adoption of FPGAs.

In the final analysis, VDC believes the combined product from Altera and Eutecus responds to a number of trends in the market place.  One is the increasing level of integration. While a solution in the past might have incorporated a DSP and an assortment of peripheral technologies, this one integrates the video analytics engine IP alongside the NIOS II cores of the Altera FPGA. Another trend is the demand for increased performance. In order to enable the next level of video analytics, the video streams must be of high quality to enable detection of very specific events (traffic violations, security breaches, etc.). Grainy video simply cannot be used to run rules centered on highly detailed events.  No doubt, competing FPGA suppliers are taking note and on track to developing rival solutions.