Hisilicon introduced SoC for H.265 IP camera and NVR solution

In early 2013, International Telecommunications Union (ITU) introduced and passed the next generation H.265 compression standard which is high-efficiency video coding (HEVC); It will be able to fully replace the current H.264/AVC compression standard that is widely used in video streaming, storage and sharing. At the same image quality, adopting H.265 video compression standard can reduce 40% file size, and maximum resolution reaches up to 8192x4320, also offers higher compression efficiency encoding.

4K video products such as tablet, smartphone, HDTV and digital cameras, home video cameras as well as the rapid spread of HD surveillance system will be H.265's markets, including DSLR, camcorders, OTT TV and bandwidth limited 1080P video system. Most of these products will utilize the DSP + ARM solution or CPU + GPU architecture to achieve.

Before the end of this year, Hisilicon will launch H.265 IP camera (Hi3516A) and H.265 NVR (Hi3536) and related SoC for H.254 video solution.

Approaching the Super HDTV era

In HD IP cameras for video surveillance, we have many different resolutions including 1.0MP, 2.0MP, 3.0MP, 5.0MP or 8.0MP, we are approaching the super HD era. While some commercial surveillance projects utilize 1080P full HD video IP cameras, 3.0MP and 5.0MP cameras are available in market. Taking 5MP IP camera as an example, the camera's resolution can reaches 2560x1920, and compared to 2.0MP's resolution 1920x1080, its horizontal resolution increase from 1050TVL to above 1450TVL, which greatly satisfied end-users.

Hisilicon H.265/HEVC open Ultra High Definition video surveillance

Due to greatly increasing of video capturing resolution, video compression or encoding becomes the bottlenecks for video surveillance cameras. Film and television industry only focus on video quality, but not pay attention to codec efficiency. Video surveillance is completely different, since the greatly increasing of resolution, the camera requires high efficient encoding and with lowest delay, this can enable camera deliver high quality images in real time.

The current IP cameras and NVRs adopt H.264 compression standard which can no longer meet the need for ultra high definition video surveillance, majority of products utilize H.264 High Profile encoding, which means 5MP@30fps video streaming requires 6~10Mbps bandwidth, while many manufacturers still utilize H.264 Baseline Profile for encoding, 1080P@30fps requires 4~6Mbps bandwidth. Apparently, people is unwilling to invest more budgets on both HDD and network bandwidth, users accept new H.265/HEVC video compression technology with reason that it offers much higher compression efficiency.

September 2014, Hisilicon - the world leading Semi-Conductor manufacturer, introduces first IP camera SoC - Hi3516A which is based on H.265/HEVC standard. Hi3516A SoC adopts advanced H.265/HEVC algorithm to improve compression efficiency, using its own technology to reduce lagging and block effects in motion scenes, maintain high image quality while reducing bit-rate 50%.

Meanwhile, Hi3516A is a flexible ARM Cortex-A7 processor, which integrates smart analysis unit IVE2.0 to provide more than 40 different kinds of smart video analytic including plate license recognition, perimeter detection, facial detection...etc. Its true multi-frame combination based wide dynamic range (WDR) and patented third generation 3D digital noise reduction enable camera to capture high quality images under harsh lighting conditions. H.2516A supports video encoding for 5 megapixel, utilizing advanced network transmission technology, the camera's video latency can be as low as 100ms.

Hisilicon will introduce Hi3536, which is first H.265/HEVC processor for ultra high definition video surveillance storage and NVR. Hi3526 processor utilizes Hisilicon advanced video processing technology, supports 16 channel 1080P H.265/HEVC video recording or 4 channel 4K resolution H.265/HEVC. Support 4K@60fps video displaying, or 9 channel 1080P@30fps video output.

Meanwhile, H.3536 flexible advanced 4 core ARM Cortex-A17 processor (performance is higher 1.6 times than Cortex-A9), clock reaches 1.6GHz, also integrated an ARM high-end GPU-Mali T721, offering perfect UI and smart video analysis function design, through combining Hisilicon patented IVE2.0, it can provide up to 40 different kinds of smart video functions. Hi3536 supports 4 SATA 3.0 interface to meet needs of ultra high definition video storage, while supporting dual GMAC, network speeds reach up to 640Mbit/s.