Facilitating the development of a new generation of HD video enabled Digital Still Cameras (DSCs), Ambarella has announced the availability of the A7L system-on-chip (SoC).
Offering a variety of video and still picture effects including: watercolor painting, drawing, miniature, pop color, and soft focus, the A7L includes hardware for real-time panorama sweep photography. Using 3D Motion Compensated Temporal Filtering (MCTF) and multiple exposures, it can deliver clear images even in low light conditions. With multi-frame still image processing, night time photography is optimized using advanced flash light support.
“The A7L offers a unique combination of outstanding still image quality and full 1080p60 HD video for the next generation of hybrid digital still cameras,” said Fermi Wang, Ambarella CEO in a company press release. “We believe the chip's incredibly low power consumption will not only extend battery life but inspire innovation in new camera form factors.”
With the ability to capture up to thirty 16-megapixel still images per second, the A7L supports full 1080p HD H.264 video at 60 frames per second for fluid motion even during fast moving sports scenes. While the A7L's lens distortion correction enables optimal results from wide angle and small form factor lenses, its multi-frame, high ISO image capture and High Dynamic Range (HDR (News - Alert)) processing ensure exceptional image quality.
Requiring only a single 16-bit DDR3 DRAM for extremely low power consumption and low system cost, the A7L is fabricated in leading edge 32nm process technology.
In December 2010, the company introduced the iOne System-on-Chip (SoC) solution, which adds enhanced HD camera and multimedia capabilities to the Android (News - Alert) platform.
The new solution benefits from the Android ecosystem and cloud-based video services to pave the way for development of advanced smart camera devices that will offer enhancements in digital still photography and advanced HD video recording. Offering support to multi-stream encoding capability along with live video streaming, the new iOne SoC allows smooth WiFi (News - Alert) upload of video clips.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Jennifer Russell