Video

NVIDIA Toolsets Target GPU Acceleration of Deep Learning, Other Algorithms for High-Performance Computing

"General-purpose GPU" (or "GPGPU") refers to the use of graphics processors for a variety of non-graphics tasks, and is a frequently discussed topic here at InsideDSP. GPUs are massively parallel processors, originally designed to only handle vertex and pixel operations. However, with the emergence of programmable shader-based architectures beginning with NVIDIA's mainstream GeForce 3 line in 2001 and joined by ATI Technologies' (now AMD's) Radeon 9700 and derivatives unveiled the following Read more...

CogniVue's "Opus" APEX Generation 3: Vision Processing With Implementation Flexibility

Practical computer vision (i.e. "embedded vision") is rapidly becoming a mainstream reality. Numerous processor chip and core suppliers have responded to increasing market demand with a variety of processor options. One of the first companies to target the vision processor space, Quebec, Canada-based CogniVue, has just unveiled its third-generation core architecture. CogniVue's path to the vision market involved several intermediate steps. The company was initially founded fifteen years ago by Read more...

Synopsys Fields Processor Core for Neural Network Computer Vision Applications

The computer vision market is in a period of dramatic expansion. Market forecasts consolidated by Synopsys attest to the burgeoning adoption of practical computer vision (i.e. "embedded vision") technology (Figure 1) in a range of high-volume products. This growth is fueled by the increasing performance and decreasing cost and power consumption of processors, and by the growing awareness of the value that can be delivered via object detection, tracking, recognition and other vision processing Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Special-purpose Processors Focus on Computer Vision

It's now very clear that computer vision is becoming a mass-market technology. Modern, practical computer vision (or, "embedded vision," as I prefer to call it) is rapidly becoming essential in cars, for example, where it enables a host of valuable safety features. In smartphones, computer vision enables better photographs and image-based search. And new smart-home devices use vision to perform functions such as messaging you when your kid gets home, or when an unknown person arrives. This is a Read more...

Xilinx Previews New Chips and Tools for Heterogeneous Processing

Back in early 2010, Xilinx first began discussing its "Extensible Processing Platform" concept, followed by a formal introduction of the Zynq-7000 product family one year later (with initial sampling another year after that). Zynq-7000 wasn't the first processor-plus-programmable logic combo chip; both Xilinx and competitors like Altera had previously developed such devices. But at the time it was unique in that it embedded a full-fledged processor subsystem, including a full peripheral set, Read more...

CEVA's Computer Vision Advances to the Next Generation

With the MM3101, launched at the January 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, silicon IP supplier CEVA for the first time provided a processor core with instructions and other features specifically tailored for computer vision algorithms.  (The precursor MM2000 and MM3000 were focused predominantly on encoding and decoding images and video). Later, the company released a super-resolution algorithm for computational photography, along with a software framework that enables Android applications to Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Here Come the Learning Machines

In many applications of digital signal processing – such as speech recognition and computer vision – the essential objective is to distinguish objects of interest, such as words or faces. This can be very challenging in real-world situations where objects of interest are distorted (e.g., a person is speaking with an accent, or a face is turned at an angle from the camera) or obscured (for example, a voice is competing with background noise, or a face is partially covered by a hand). Over the Read more...

Case Study: System Designers Selecting Multimedia Processors Benefit from BDTI Insights

Portable electronics devices are incorporating increasingly sophisticated multimedia capabilities, while at the same time striving to meet tough size, weight, battery life and cost requirements. Recently, a BDTI client launched a design for a new portable multimedia system requiring billions of floating-point operations per second and low input-to-output latency, and single-digit power consumption to enable compact and fan-less system operation. Robust software development tools were also a key Read more...

Cadence Turns the Xtensa Architecture Up to Eleven*

At January's CES (Consumer Electronics Show), Cadence showed that has picked up the baton and continued the pace of acquired company Tensilica by announcing the eleventh generation of the Xtensa configurable processor architecture. First unveiled in 1999, Xtensa has received evolutionary advancements on a roughly two year cycle since that time; in late 2013, for example, InsideDSP covered the Xtensa 10 product release. At the time, Cadence had also unveiled the fifth generation of its LX Read more...

EZchip Gets Up in ARMs

Massively parallel processor supplier Tilera is a company that InsideDSP has kept an eye on for nearly a decade now, stretching back to BDTI's benchmarking of the company's first-generation TILE architecture in its 64-core form (see sidebar "Company, Architecture and Product Line Background"). After an initial flurry of product releases, privately held Tilera grew uncharacteristically quiet over the next half-decade, focusing on rolling out the remainder of the TILE-Gx family, conserving its Read more...