PowerVR Series4 processing core based on multi-standard video codec technology

Imagination Technologies, the multimedia and communications technology company, has announced that it will release the first members of its PowerVR Series4 video cores.

　　The PowerVR Series4 D4500MP video decoder and E4500MP video encoder are based on the successful PowerVR VXD and VXE Series3 multi-standard video codec technology. These multi-channel architecture video silicon semiconductor intellectual property (IP) provide enhanced features designed for modern applications, such as wireless display and video capture with unprecedented color accuracy, as well as HD and Ultra-HD displays (H.264 L5.2 4Kx2K@60fps).

　　While having industry-leading performance, these video processing cores still maintain a small area and ultra-low power consumption, making them ideal for consumer electronics applications. These cores are fully scalable from single to quad channels, ensuring 1080P performance and low power requirements in a compact area, or achieving industry-leading 4Kx2K performance.

　　“With the ability to handle over a billion colours at full resolution, the enhanced colour processing capabilities of the PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP ensure significant performance improvements for today’s demanding video applications, with crisper and more accurate video content being used in contemporary applications such as wireless displays and high-quality video capture,” says Tony King Smith, VP of Marketing at Imagination. “With the growing availability of OLED displays offering wider colour gamuts and 10-bit displays, consumers are demanding higher colour fidelity than ever before. And with ‘beyond real-time’ HD video processing performance, these cores are perfectly suited for today’s broadest range of display applications, while also providing more than enough performance for future Ultra-HD 4Kx2K applications such as large wall displays and giant tiled screens.”

　　True-to-life color processing at full resolution, supporting over one billion colors

　　The PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP support enhanced colour depth, delivering up to 10-bit colour accuracy, enabling over a billion colours, compared to the 16 million colours available in today’s traditional 8-bit systems. The increased colour depth support allows the SoC to maintain high-precision internal processing from video source to display output, resulting in true and lifelike colour reproduction. The enhanced colour performance provides the colour fidelity required for the latest generation of 10-bit and OLED displays to ensure maximum performance. The use of 10-bit also helps to significantly reduce colour banding in traditional 8-bit systems.

　　To further enhance the color rendering capabilities available, the video processor core has increased the color resolution to 4:4:4 (or 4:2:2), providing full-resolution data for all video unit components. This makes conversion between YCbCr and RGB easier and more accurate as no interpolation is required, making it perfect for wireless display subsystems. Repeated conversion between traditional color formats (and resolutions) can result in loss of detail and blurring due to interpolation errors, while using 4:4:4 guarantees that such errors are eliminated.

　　The enhanced resolution and fidelity of the cores enable applications such as camcorders, digital still cameras, SLR cameras and mobile phones to maximize the performance of their image sensors, which typically offer at least 10-bit color depth. This enables them to deliver unprecedented professional-grade image quality, providing product differentiation for manufacturers and added value for consumers.

　　Encoding and decoding performance for future applications

　　PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP respectively improve the decoding and encoding performance of full HD 1080P video applications, ensuring realistic ultra-high-definition quality, multi-stream HD channel browsing, and high frame rate support for high-speed continuous fine slow-motion for sports events and other special content. These new cores also provide industry-leading performance for ultra-high-definition 4Kx2K video, which is the core technology of future video applications, providing four times the visual information capacity of traditional HDTV, as well as "information wall" flat display applications that can closely integrate TV with applications, social media and channel browsing.

　　IP core internals

　　The PowerVR D4500MP supports all major video standards, including H.264 HP, H.264 MP, H.264 BP, H.264 MVC, VC-1, VP8/WebM, H.263, RMVB (Real Video), MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVS, VP6 and JPEG.

　　The PowerVR video core remains the industry record holder for low power consumption, capable of decoding H.264HP 1080P30 video at less than 15mW (40LP process).

　　The PowerVR D4500MP multi-standard, multi-stream video decoder IP core uses a multi-core architecture, which enables its performance to be easily configured for different application requirements of high resolution or high frame rate with ultra-low power consumption when using mainstream silicon semiconductor process technology, up to full H.264 level 5.2 support. This unprecedented performance ensures that 4K resolution content can be decoded and output with H.264 L5.2 4Kx2K@60fps.

　　By allowing any bitstream format up to H.264 HP to be decoded at faster than real-time speeds, the PowerVR D4500MP ensures support for a growing number of cutting-edge applications that greatly enhance the user experience, including 1920x1080@120fps decoding of high-speed photography slow-motion playback, trick play modes and video editing applications.

　　The PowerVR E4500MP is a multi-standard, multi-stream video encoder that supports all major high-definition video and still image standards. In addition, the E4500MP supports encoding resolutions up to 4Kx2K@30fps. The E4500MP's video source scaling component can reduce the size of the video source stream, which is an important application feature for new applications such as adaptive streaming and simulcasting low-resolution and high-resolution video. The E4500MP core also supports H.264 lossless mode, which is a basic requirement for applications such as the highest fidelity video transmission.

　　The cores are available for licensing now and will be available to leading partners in the second half of 2012.

　　About Imagination Technologies

　　Imagination Technologies is a global leader in multimedia and communications technologies, developing and licensing market-leading processor solutions for graphics, video display, embedded processors, multi-standard communications and interconnection, and cross-platform V.VoIP & VoLTE. These semiconductor and software intellectual property (IP) solutions for the system-on-chip market (SoC) also provide a combination of software drivers and development tools supported by multiple operating systems, as well as a broad market and technology core ecosystem. Its target markets include mobile phones and multimedia devices, IoT home consumer electronics, mobile and tablet computing, automotive electronics, telecommunications, medical equipment, smart energy, IoT sensors and controllers, etc. Imagination's authorized customers include many of the world's leading semiconductors, network operators, and electronic product OEM/ODM companies. The company is headquartered in the UK and has sales and R&D branches around the world.