Silicon Image Expands IP Portfolio With High-Quality Video Processing Technology

Monday, August 22nd, 2011
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New cineramIC™ Suite Includes High Quality, High Resolution Scaler, Deinterlacer and Video Enhancement Cores

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Silicon Image (NASDAQ:SIMG), a leading provider of wireless and wired HD connectivity solutions, today announced its new family of high-quality cineramIC™ video processing IP cores, ranging from scalers and deinterlacers to video enhancement solutions such as noise reduction and edge enhancement. These IP cores are targeted for integration into digital video system-on-chip (SoC) designs to deliver optimal image quality for consumer electronics (CE), professional video processing, surveillance and medical imaging devices.

Silicon Image’s new cineramIC video processing IP cores can be used in a variety of products where high-quality video and digital image enhancement is required. Adaptive scaling and deinterlacing IP cores modify the format of the video stream to compensate for differing video content formats and display resolutions. In many HD applications, low resolution compressed video must be decompressed and scaled up to the higher resolutions of today’s DTVs and displays. This can create noticeable image artifacts such as undesirable jagged edges on shapes and halos around text. Silicon Image’s video smoothing, detail and edge enhancement and mosquito noise technology help reduce the artifacts created by digital video scaling and compression. By integrating Silicon Image’s video processing technology, SoC suppliers will be able to deliver top-quality video for their customers.

Chip designers can choose from a variety of processing blocks, which include:

Scaler IP Cores:

  • Adaptive Scaler – Scales video to higher/lower resolutions while preserving image detail and suppressing ringing artifacts in graphics content.

Video Enhancement IP Cores:

  • Mosquito Noise Reduction – Removes mosquito noise present along object edges in highly compressed digital images.
  • Detail and Edge Enhancement – Sharpens image edge boundaries and improves fine detail in an image.
  • Video Smoothing – Removes the jagged (rough, irregular) edges in an image which are caused by digital compression, scaling artifacts, poor-quality deinterlacing, or resolution limitations in digital sampling of an image.

Deinterlacer IP Cores:

  • Precision Deinterlacer – Converts interlaced video into the progressive image quality demanded by today’s high-resolution displays by eliminating many of the artifacts found in common deinterlacers to produce a smooth image free of artifacts.
  • Progressive Reprocessing (PReP) – Recovers the original interlace signal from a progressive video data that has been previously deinterlaced by a poor quality deinterlacer to help significantly improve picture quality provided by the Precision Deinterlacer.

“The new cineramIC video processing IP cores bolster Silicon Image’s IP product portfolio of high-quality, high-resolution video and image solutions,” said Ron Richter, senior director of worldwide IP core licensing at Silicon Image, Inc. “By integrating these IP cores, SoC device manufacturers will be able to provide their customers with the most advanced video processing techniques for optimum video quality on HD DTVs and displays.”