4i2i Announces Motion JPEG VHDL Encoder and Decoder Core

Aberdeen, Scotland – June 1, 2000 – 4i2i, a leading supplier of software and hardware for video coding announces the immediate availability of a motion JPEG (MJPEG) VHDL encoder and decoder core (CODEC). The core conforms to the ISO 10918 base-line standard. It supports any frame size from 16x16 to 1024x1024 and video formats of 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 as well as fully custom formats.It can perform full 30 fps CIF and 15 fps VGA encoding and decoding in Xilinx and Altera FPGA devices. The core contains parameterised Huffman tables and fully configurable quantisation tables. Support is provided for restart-markers allowing easy integration with protocols for framing and error-correction coding. Compression ratios in the range of 10 to 20 produce good quality results and intra-coding provides the advantage of the fully random frame access, which is necessary in many applications.

Two alternative interfaces are available supporting either master or slave operation. During master operation the core autonomously prompts DMA transfers from/to external memory. During slave operation an interrupt driven external processor monitors status registers and controls the transfer of data to/from the core.

The core is small and fast. It is written in device independent VHDL and has been successfully synthesised/routed for Xilinx Virtex FPGAs and Altera 20K FPGAs. It is also suitable for implementation in ASICs. A complete JPEG encoder/decoder evaluation package will be available shortly consisting of the down-loadable bitstream for the core, an FPGA (Xilinx XCV-600 or XCV-800) development board for the PC and C software which interfaces to the core and supports image encoding and decoding. The core is available in the form of net-lists for most FPGA families, VHDL source code and with associated C evaluation software. Various flexible redistribution license agreements are available for all of 4i2i’s cores.

Andy Ray, project leader stated, “The core is expected to find applications in products for security surveillance, video conferencing, video editing and digital cameras.”

For technical, pricing and licensing information, please contact Martyn Riley:

About 4i2i

4i2i Communications Ltd designs algorithms, components and systems for the communications industry. 4i2i specialises in providing customers with video coding, xDSL and error control coding technology in the form of Hardware Descriptions Languages (HDL) for IC design and for DSP and other platforms.

Founded in 1995, 4i2i's operations are located in Aberdeen, Scotland.