Chips&Media to launch new high-resolution IP for AR and VR
Wave6 Series to launch in March
Chips&Media will launch its new high-resolution video IP product called Wave6 Series in March, TheElec has learned.
The first product in the series, called Wave627 (encoder IP), will support AV1 and VVC(H.266) standards.
The company will launch Wave637 (codec IP) in August and Wave617 (decoder IP) within the year.
Products that launch this year will support AV1. Products launching next year will support both AV1 and VVC.
These will be aimed at over-the-top (OTT) media service as well as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications.
Up to now, Chips&Media have launched video IP used for video processing in multimedia system-on-a-chip as Wave4 and Wave5 Series. Video IP is divided into encoder IP for filming, decode IP for playing and codec IP that supports both encoder and decoder functions. Wave6 is Chips&Media’s highest specification video IP to date.
AV1 is an open source standard announce by Alliance of Open Media in 2018. Last year in February, Netflix announced its support for the standard, which has expanded its application in the OTT sector. The standard has 20% improved encoding compression efficiency compared to the previous standard called VP9. Chip development is also less costly as the license is free.
VVC standard will be added next year. The video standard was announced in July last year by Fraunhofer HHI, whose members include Apple, Intel, Huawei and Microsoft. The standard supports 360 degree video. It can be used for AR and VR applications. It also supports 16K resolution. In Wave6, however, support will extend up to 8K only.
Chips&Media is planning to launch Wave638 (codec IP), Wave677 (codec IP) Wave658 (decoder IP) and Wave678 (codec IP) next year. These will allow for 8K resolution and 60fps.
A company spokesperson said the Wave6 Series will allow application to expand from TV, set-top box, smartphones and tablets to OTT, VR and AR. It will later be applicable for the automobile industry and other industries, they said.
Chips&Media is planning to expand into image signal processor IP, computational photography IP and computer vision IP. These will have synergy with its existing video codec IP for expansion into advanced driver assistance systems and drones (helicam). As of the third quarter of 2020, research and development spending accounted for 45% of the company’s sales. This is an increase from 39% of the year prior.
Last year, the company also clinched a deal with a large Chinese appliance company to supply high resolution IP. 8K TVs with the IP applied will launched in 2022. Sales from royalties will start in the same year. Sales from the company’s automobile video IP deal with a US semiconductor company signed in August 2020 is expected to occur in 2023.