W&W Communications Announces H.264 Video Architecture
W&W Communications Inc. recently announced its ultra high-performance, high channel-density, low-latency and low-power Taos architecture for the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) video-coding standard.
The Taos architecture is specifically optimized for video surveillance, two-way video communications and wireless video network applications, where very high channel densities, high performance, low latency and power efficiency are critical requirements.
Taos shatters through the H.264 performance barrier by being the first to enable encoding of 1920x1088 resolution video at full 60 frames per second in single chip implementations. It is also the first to smash through the channel-density barrier for H.264 with eight simultaneous encode channels in D1 resolution at full 30 fps. In addition to providing superior performance and image quality it is the first to achieve near-zero end-to-end encode-decode latency, a significant ability for the rapidly growing latency-sensitive focused markets.
"In defining the Taos architecture we worked closely with leading OEMs in the video surveillance, video conferencing and wireless home video distribution industry," said Lars Herlitz, CEO and co-founder of W&W Communications. "Taos' capabilities give our customers the ability to truly innovate with H.264 in their products. The high channel-densities mean lower costs at less than $1.50 per CIF stream. This opens up new opportunities for OEMs."
"As H.264 establishes itself in the market, it is fulfilling its promise to serve a very broad range of applications," said Michelle Abrahams, principal analyst multimedia and consumer markets at market research firm In-Stat. "Taos-based H.264 video codecs from W&W Communications contribute to the fulfillment of this promise by addressing latency-sensitive applications in the video surveillance, video conferencing, live video broadcast and wireless video networking space. The combination of zero latency, multi-channel processing and high-definition opens up new and exiting opportunities in these markets."
According to market research firm iSupply, global video surveillance camera revenue is expected to grow from $4.9 billion in 2006 to more than $9 billion in 2011, a compound annual growth rate of 13.2 percent. Unit shipments of video surveillance equipment are expected to more than double from 29.8 million in 2006 to 65.7 million in 2011 and the market for surveillance-camera chips is forecasted to hit $1.25 billion in 2011.
"HD capabilities open up new possibilities in video surveillance, such as facial recognition. True multi-stream capabilities allow OEMs to cost-reduce DVRs and offer IP cameras that can simultaneously record in HD to hard disk and in CIF or QCIF for transmission to a cell phone," said Kishan Jainandunsing, vice president of marketing at W&W Communications. "Near-zero latency makes Taos the ideal solution for latency-sensitive applications in surveillance, video conferencing and wireless video distribution in the home, where instant feedback is a hard requirement."
The Taos architecture has the processing bandwidth to encode and decode 1080p60 video. This processing bandwidth can be distributed in a flexible manner. For example, streams can be encoded or decoded simultaneously as one 1080p60, two 1080p30, four 720p30, eight D1 or 32 CIF streams at 30 fps, as well as any other combination of streams, resolutions and frame rates, equating to the maximum processing capacity of a single 1080p60 stream.