videantis joins Khronos, targets OpenVX computer vision API

Hannover, Germany, December 18, 2013 – videantis today announced it has joined the Khronos Group to bring support for the OpenVX™ computer vision acceleration API to its low power, licensable v-MP4000HDX processor architecture. Computer vision is the key technology that drives new applications such as always-on smart mobile cameras, gesture-based interfaces, 3D-sensing games, and automotive driver assistance systems.

Having a consistent, standardized, royalty free, and open API such as OpenVX enables rapid adoption of computer vision acceleration by application developers, just like OpenGL did some years ago for 3D graphics. OpenVX can be used directly by applications or to accelerate higher-level middleware, such as the popular OpenCV open source vision library.

Videantis has a long history in high-performance, low-power video processing, and joining Khronos as a contributing member enables videantis to be closely involved while the OpenVX standard is being finalized. The videantis v-MP4000HDX processor architecture is ideally suited to accelerate computer vision algorithms, typically achieving a 100x speedup compared to running on the host CPU, and power consumption that’s 1000x lower.

“OpenVX is designed to enable power and performance optimized vision processing on a wide diversity of processors and hardware and Khronos warmly welcomes the participation of videantis in the creation of this important open standard,” said Victor Erukhimov, CEO of Itseez and chair of the Khronos OpenVX working group. “Videantis’ expertise will help ensure that OpenVX truly enables new market opportunities for specialized vision processors and architectures - bringing vision capabilities to platforms and devices everywhere.”

“We’re already seeing strong market demand for running OpenVX on our processor, indicating the need for an open, standardized computer vision acceleration API. We’re looking forward to extending our vision acceleration support to include OpenVX, in addition to continuing our support for OpenCV acceleration,” said Hans-Joachim Stolberg, CEO at videantis.

High-performance, low-power vision processor

The videantis v-MP4000HDX scalable processor architecture is specifically designed to efficiently accelerate video processing algorithms. Due to its low power consumption and high performance, the v-MP4000HDX supports full HD vision processing, allowing for more accurate algorithms and an overall higher-quality user experience, even on always-on, battery-operated devices. The 10-core v-MP4280HDX subsystem performs 192 sixteen-bit pixel operations per cycle, 24 on each of its eight VLIW media processors. The video processing subsystem is also silicon area efficient, occupying well under 2 mm2 of silicon in 28nm technology, including all required on-chip memories. Thanks to its unified video/vision architecture, the subsystem can run a variety of computer vision APIs such as OpenCV, OpenVX, or proprietary standards, as well as simultaneously run multi-format video and still-image codecs. The v-MP4000HDX processor IP is available for licensing today.

About videantis

Headquartered in Hannover, Germany, videantis GmbH is a one-stop video IP and solution provider delivering flexible multi-standard HW/SW video, imaging, and vision solutions for mobile, consumer, and automotive markets. Based on a unified processor platform approach that is licensed to chip manufacturers, videantis provides tailored solutions to meet the specific needs of its customers. With their core competencies of deep video application expert know-how and strong SoC design and system architecture expertise, videantis passionately serves a worldwide customer base with a diverse range of target applications, such as mobile phones, over-the-top TV, in-car infotainment, and driver assist systems. Videantis has been recognized by the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Germany Award as one of the fifty fastest-growing technology companies in Germany. For more information about videantis, please visit www.videantis.com.

About Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is a not for profit, member-funded consortium focused on the creation of royalty-free open standards for parallel computing, graphics and dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos API specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests. For more information, please visit http://www.khronos.org.