Altera Cyclone III FPGAs land leading role in new SVS multiviewer products

Altera Corporation has announced that its low-cost, low-power Cyclone III FPGAs were chosen by Silicon Video Systems (SVS) to build the most compact and cost-effective multiviewer product on the market. Multiviewers are used in professional audio/video production, security surveillance and broadcast monitoring applications where multi-image display processing is required.

“Ease-of-use and cost-effectiveness clinched our decision to apply Cyclone III FPGAs in our new multiviewer,” said Adam Kao, director of research and development at SVS. “The low cost of integration delivered by Cyclone III FPGAs enabled us to eliminate several standard components, which reduced our costs and minimized board space. Also, participation in Altera’s Cyclone III early access program enabled us to apply the most advanced semiconductor technology possible, giving us a head start on our design and adding to our competitive advantage.”

In the new SVS multiviewer, the Cyclone III FPGA implements color space conversion, FIFOs, and clock conversion, as well as support for all the display resolutions. These functions required several discrete devices in prior multiviewer products.

As one of the participants in the Altera Cyclone III early access program, SVS had advanced information on the new FPGA for several months prior to its announcement. This enabled SVS designers to accelerate their development and take advantage of the latest in low-cost 65-nm FPGA technology. As a result, SVS was able to launch its new product only four months following silicon availability. Design and development for complex products like SVS’s multiviewer can typically take up to year or more. The several months’ head start provided by Altera’s early access program delivered significant and tangible time-to-market benefits to SVS and other participating customers.

“Designers of cost-sensitive systems are seizing Cyclone III FPGAs for their clearly differentiated cost, high density, flexibility and power consumption advantages,” said Louie Leung, marketing director at Altera. “It’s solving a range of engineering challenges unmet by competing programmable logic offerings.”

Altera