Parallel processor firm enhances core for HD video

— PACT XPP Technologies AG, a developer of a reconfigurable highly parallel processor, has redesigned its technology to produce the XPP-III version of its architecture and claimed that performance, for the first time, allows high definition video decoding without additional hardware accelerators.

On the original version of the XPP architecture, released in October 2000, PACT included 128 processors and an FPGA-like array of interconnectivity. Pact (Munich, Germany) added a package of video processor configurations and multi-standard video codecs for porting to its XPP-II parallel processor in January 2005.

The XPP-III is a software programmable standalone processor platform for signal processing applications. It combines a coarse-grained reconfigurable array with a sequential architecture for the control-flow code. Although the main target application is video, the XPP-III is a general purpose processor which can be used in other application fields such as wireless baseband processing, the company said.