Ambarella Announces H.265/HEVC Processor for IP Cameras

Business Wire: Ambarella introduces S3, a security IP camera SoC family with support for the new H.265/HEVC video standard. S3’s full implementation of H.265 delivers up to twice the compression efficiency of Ambarella’s current H.264 IP camera SoCs. S3 can encode H.265 video at up to 4Kp30 resolution, or H.264 up to 4Kp60. Its latest generation of ISP provides advanced noise reduction to maximize the benefits of H.265, while HDR processing manages challenging high contrast scenes. S3 also includes flexible de-warping hardware for cameras with 180-degree or 360-degree panoramic viewing with dynamic windows and digital PTZ.

“With S3, we establish a new standard of H.265 encoding excellence to enable future generations of the highest quality HD and Ultra HD IP cameras,” said Fermi Wang, President & CEO of Ambarella.

The S3 family comprises software-compatible SoCs that range in performance from 1080p60 to 4Kp60 video with support for multiple streams and transcoding between H.264 and H.265 formats. S3 includes a 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with floating point and NEONTM as well as dedicated DSP subsystems for ISP, video compression and analytics. It also supports comprehensive I/O including high-speed SLVS/MIPI/HiSPI sensor interfaces, USB host and client and gigabit Ethernet. The S3 Linux-based SDK allows designers to create IP cameras with differentiated features including wireless connectivity, cloud services, wide-angle panorama viewing, analytics, edge recording and transcoding.

S3 Feature Summary:

• H.265 (HEVC) Main Profile encoding up to 4Kp30 video with support for Ambarella SmartHEVC low-bitrate streaming enhancements.
• H.264 (AVC) Baseline/Main/High Profile Level 5.1 encoding up to 4Kp60 video with support for Ambarella SmartAVC low-bitrate streaming enhancements.
• Flexible encoder engine supporting multiple streams with independent resolution, frame rate, quality and codec configurations. Support for transcoding between H.265 and H.264, Scalable Video Codec (SVC-T) and sub-frame low-delay encoding.
• ISP with high-speed SLVDS/MIPI®/HiSPi™ interfaces supporting up to 64MP sensor resolution.
• Line-interleaved multi-exposure HDR processing up to 4Kp30.
• Motion-compensated 3D noise reduction with de-ghosting to enhance low-light performance.
• 1.2 GHz Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with floating point, NEON and 1 MByte full speed L2 cache. Intelligent video analytics hardware acceleration.
• Real-time hardware-accelerated de-warping for 180/360 degree panoramic lenses with up to 4Kp30 performance, multiple window layouts and digital PTZ.
• AES/3DES/SHA-1/MD5 encryption engines.
• Support for DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L, gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 host and device, HDMI® 2.0, SDXC SD™ Card, and dual sensor interfaces.
• Low-power 28nm process