OmniTek Brings 3Gb/s SDI Products To Market

Leading test and measurement manufacturer OmniTek has announced that at IBC 2009, the company will be presenting several reference design and development platforms that have been produced as a result of in-depth collaboration with some of the world's leading silicon chip manufacturers.
OmniTek has been performing bespoke design and development projects for companies in the broadcast industry since 1998. Recently, the company has developed a 'centre of excellence' in emerging technologies such as PCI Express interface design and 3 Gb/s SDI signal generation and analysis.
This has resulted in several high-profile design projects such as the Advanced Video Development Platform designed in conjunction with Xilinx; a high-performance PCI Express DMA controller reference design for Altera Corporation; and a range of SDI video and embedded audio IP reference designs for National semiconductor Corporation.
The Advanced Video Development Platform is a high-performance prototyping board for users of Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs. The system provides designers with a complete toolkit of hardware, firmware and software components to assist with the development of a wide range of real-time image processing applications. Roger Fawcett, OmniTek Managing Director, said: "The AVDP system is being used by hundreds of companies all over the world for prototyping video algorithms. We believe it is the most flexible and cost-effective way to reduce time-to-market on new video designs."
OmniTek has been working with PCI Express interfaces for many years now, and the new DMA controller engine developed for the Altera Stratix IV GX and Arria II GX FPGA families supports multiple lanes of Gen1 & Gen2 PCIe and is capable of transferring up to four 3Gb/s SDI video streams simultaneously in full duplex mode. Fawcett said: "This DMA controller has extremely high bi-directional bandwidth capability. This is the enabling technology for multi-channel uncompressed video streaming in a low-cost PC platform."
To help minimise the design time for SDI video I/O projects, OmniTek has worked with National Semiconductor to provide FPGA support IP for National's triple-rate SD, HD and 3Gb/s compatible SDI serializers and derserializers. OmniTek has also developed a full embedded audio input/output IP package that integrates seamlessly with National's SDI interface code. The IP packages are available for both Xilinx Spartan 3A and Altera Cyclone III development platforms, to enable rapid prototyping and accelerated time-to-market for new system designs.
Fawcett concluded: "OmniTek is proud to be working with some of the most respected names in the silicon business. Our engineering skills and expertise covers all aspects of system design from initial proposal through to complete turnkey product development. Visitors to IBC will see our reference designs in use on many different booths, and our 3Gb/s compatible test and measurement systems will also be very much in evidence throughout the show."
(KMcA/BMcc)