FPGA processing speeds surveillance to market

The low-cost Spartan-3E FPGA and MicroBlaze soft processor play an integral role in both the digital video recorder and dome camera of Samsung's new digital video surveillance system.

Samsung has chosen to use the Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA and MicroBlaze soft processor in its latest digital video surveillance system.

Xilinx low-cost Spartan-3E FPGA and MicroBlaze soft processor play an integral role in both the digital video recorder (DVR) and dome camera, providing Samsung with the competitive edge by increasing functionality, reducing development costs and improving time to market.

Samsung is among a growing number of video surveillance manufacturers to rely on Xilinx embedded solutions to gain the competitive edge.

Video surveillance systems are a key component in ensuring security at train stations, airports, banks, casinos, malls, even our homes.

As security risks increase, the need to visually monitor and record events has escalated in diverse use models.

As a result, new architectures must provide scalability for cost-effective solutions across an increasingly diverse set of video surveillance system requirements.

According to the research firm Semicast, the market for video surveillance cameras and equipment is forecasted to grow from US $919 million to $1.7 billion over the next five years, representing a compound annual growth rate in excess of 13%.

"Xilinx low-cost Spartan-3E devices and MicroBlaze soft processor provided the ideal solution, combining low-cost and ease-of-use with ultimate flexibility at the right performance", says Lee Hyuk Bum, Senior Engineer at Samsung.

"In addition, FPGAs enable a flexible architecture allowing future upgrades and new features to be deployed over the network, thus increasing the life of the system".

The Samsung DVR processes four channels simultaneously on a single Spartan-3E device embedded with a MicroBlaze soft processor.

A second Spartan-3E device with MicroBlaze processor is used by the dome camera to calculate multiple co-ordinates and interface with the digital video recorder.

Based on its industry leading performance and low price points, the Xilinx Spartan generation has been broadly adopted in high-volume, consumer applications such as DVD players, plasma displays and HDTV.

With the recent introduction of its Spartan-3A, Spartan-3AN and Spartan-3 DSP platforms, Xilinx continues to add new market-specific features to its low cost Spartan series FPGAs while reducing the cost by 30x since its introduction.

Back to top