FPGA Gurus

This blog has suggested several times that the combination of multiple integer processing cores (both hard and soft) and DSP blocks on a single FPGA die, might lead to interesting parallel processing opportunities in video. I never really expected breakthroughs to emerge at a venue like the National Association of Broadcasters’ conference, despite its reputation for showing off new video editing hardware. Silly me.

Panasonic will be showing off a five-slot, P2 tapeless format memory-card drive at NAB, intended for professional video editing. TheAJ-PCD35 will rely on Altera Corp.’s Nios II processor, its Arria GX FPGA, and PCI Express megacores.

What’s interesting to me is not so much the advanced capability being offered in a very small format, though this is no doubt the selling factor for Panasonic. Instead, it’s the way that integrated functionality can combine stream processing and expanded storage to broadcast studios and video post-production, in formats that might have required RAID drives in the past.

Today, this is relegated to professional applications, but that will no doubt change as the interests of the digital home re-emerge following the current recession. Given consumers’ obsession with home-grown HD video processing, a combined parallel video and storage appliance may become commonplace in the networked home within the next decade.

FPGA vendors already had recognized the importance of home and small-business Network-Attached Storage, and even mini-Storage Area Networks, by offering IP in realms such as SATA and Fibre Channel. But the Altera design win with Panasonic could be a suggestion of the kind of melding of parallel video processing and expanded local storage that we might see in the future.