Altera's Stratix III FPGAs Selected for Harmonic's Next-Generation Universal Broadcast Video Encoder

Altera Corporation, a provider of programmable solutions that allow system and semiconductor enterprises to improve business and succeed in their markets, recently announced that Harmonic selected the Stratix III Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for the company’s high-definition (HD) H.264 1080p video broadcast encoder.

 

The Stratix III FPGAs have been designed to perform effectively in terms of programmability, flexibility and low power consumption. This solution from Altera (News - Alert) will enable Harmonic to enhance the video quality of the H.264 1080p while taking up lesser bandwidth space.

 

"Harmonic's (News - Alert) DiviCom Electra 8000 sets the benchmark for real-time video-processing technology," said Nimrod Ben-Natan, Vice President of Product Marketing, Solutions and Strategy for Harmonic Inc. "Altera's Stratix III FPGAs help us enhance our video algorithms. Altera offers clear FPGA leadership in digital signal processing (DSP) and external memory performance, while still delivering low power requirements.”

 

The Stratix III devices from Altera have been implemented in Harmonic's DiviCom Electra 8000, an encoding and transcoding solution, in order to sustain the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and MPEG-2 CODECs in both standard definition (SD) and HD formats for a full frame-rate 1080p 50/60. The company’s Stratix III devices have also created an improved picture quality and enhanced energy efficiency for the Electra 8000.

 

The Stratix III FPGAs from Altera permit designers to stabilize the required resources, eliminating the need to create and design a bigger device. This has resulted in cost reduction, lesser power consumption and compilation time and, the Stratix III FPGAs are geared to target high-end core system-processing designs in other solutions.

 

"Altera has made significant investments in our FPGA architecture and solutions to meet the demanding requirements of 1080p video-processing applications," said Arun Iyengar, senior director of Altera's broadcast and communications business units.

 

"Altera's Stratix III FPGAs deliver twice the video-processing capability of previous-generation FPGAs while maintaining a constant power budget. This allows broadcast leaders like Harmonic to further differentiate its products."