Partnership Produces Powerful Video Surveillance via FPGA

Highlighted in our January 2011 feature (Sourcing Tomorrow's Automation Innovations) as an innovation driver, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is making more inroads into plant and factories with its ability to take on more control and processing task. This new offering combines Altera's Cyclone IV FPGA technology with Berkeley, Calif-based Eutecus's multi-core video analytics engine (MVE) intellectual property (IP) to produce a high-throughput of 60 Mega-pixels per/sec, along with increased pixel precision detail for video surveillance. Eutecus's IP combines parallel algorithms and specialized coprocessors with multiple Altera Nios II cores integrated into a Cyclone IV FPGA to create the solution.

With the video analytics engine built into the FPGA, the solution screams power and scale because it allows a user to track dozens of user-defined rules. Other functions include a user to define rules, configure alerts and remotely update rules for events they want detected. The FPGA-based solution also offers the ability to customize the analytics engine for your own specific needs and comes with software graphical user interface (GUI) that allows designers to customize event-detection parameters and rules for their own specific applications. The IP also includes a application programing interface (API) to allow customers to interface with their own video management system or develop their own custom GUI.

The company points out the performance and the flexibility of Altera's video analytics solution offers customers a unique benefit by eliminating the need to make tradeoffs between system performance and the number of rules running at the same time.  

Altera offers a single-vendor source model for this video analytics solution. The IP and FPGA can be purchased directly from Altera, eliminating the need to work with multiple vendors for licensing fees, NRE charges or royalties.

>> More information can be found here,  Altera Video demo.

Altera Corp.
www.altera.com

Eutecus Inc.
www.eutecus.com