Cast IP cores for motion processing enable MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 designs

OCTOBER 4--Semiconductor intellectual-property (IP) provider CAST Inc. (Hsinchu, Taiwan; www.cast-inc.com/cores/motion) has announced a new series of motion-processing cores for high-performance video compression and decompression. These cores enable the quick and cost-effective development of real-time video systems such as digital video recorders, wireless communication devices, sophisticated surveillance systems, and other products using the popular MPEG-2 and newer MPEG-4 standards.

The CAST MoPro motion estimation/compensation core is available now for ASICs or programmable devices. It provides a hardware implementation handling 90% of the computational processing necessary for real-time video using encoding standards such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H263+. Meant to work with an embedded processor and algorithm-specific software, the MoPro core frees designers from the most challenging aspects of video compression while offering system design flexibility. Reference design software layers for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are available as options for this core.

Upcoming MPEG cores go even further, providing complete hardware implementations of specific video compression algorithms. An MPEG-4 core available by the end of this year is expected to offer full video processing (640 x 480 pixels frames at 30 frames per second) and to require just 100,000 gates. A similar high-performance, low-area MPEG-2 core will be available early next year.

"Video is fast becoming an expected part of the digital lifestyle," said Hal Barbour, president of CAST. "Our MoPro core gives graphics-system developers a powerful engine to drive all their video applications, while our MPEG cores will provide the benefits of specific algorithms in ready-to-roll IP, bringing full motion video to a wider range of smaller, cheaper products."