JUNE 17--ChipWrights Inc. (Newton, MA; www.chipwrights.com) announced that its CW4011 visual signal processor (ViSP) is being used by SMaL Camera Technologies in the development of various smart cameras for the security-and-surveillance market. ChipWrights' was the industry's first fully programmable integrated circuit that delivers the image-processing performance, power, and price required by a new generation of advanced CMOS image sensors.
ChipWrights' ViSP works better than general-purpose DSPs or microcontrollers because its execution pipeline is designed specifically for image processing. The chip comprises a highly scalable array of DSP vector processing units. Its vector/single-instruction-multiple-data architecture focuses on data handling, which is consistent with the requirements of imaging applications, rather than on instruction handling common in superscalar and VLIW techniques. And it is programmable--providing the flexibility OEMs need for customizing products and ensuring rapid time to market.
SMaL was cofounded and launched in 1999 by electronic imaging experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SMaL is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in Cambridge, MA (www.SmaLcamera.com).
