SAN JOSE, Calif., and Singapore, June 15, 2004 - At the Broadcast Asia show today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), the world leader in programmable logic solutions and Pandora International, a leader in digital film post production equipment headquartered in London, announced a collaboration that resulted in Pandora's newest 3-D Colour Cube. Following it's debut at NAB Las Vegas in April, REVOLUTION True , a 3-D colour cube capable of generating all possible colour mappings for 14-bit RGB video, exploited the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA architecture with on-board IBM PowerPC processor, to significantly reduce system complexity and memory footprint as compared to conventional colour cubes. REVOLUTION True enables many types of equipment, including projectors and monitors, to add sophisticated colour correction features at relatively low-cost.
REVOLUTION True changes the economics of colour correction by using the embedded IBM PowerPC processor of the Virtex-II Pro to host a software interpolator capable of interpolating every possible colour value using only a small amount of input data. It is supported by custom logic also implemented in the Virtex-II Pro, which creates a highly integrated solution. By comparison, a standalone look-up table capable of storing every possible colour value for 14-bit RGB values would require more than 23,000 GB of memory. The new design based on Virtex-II Pro saves the costs associated with such large quantities of memory, and allows powerful colour correction features to be added to a wide variety of professional video equipment.
The REVOLUTION True technology now makes it cost-effective to add a single-board colour corrector to each projector throughout a multiplex cinema network, to ensure consistent image quality on all screens. REVOLUTION True will also be used in movie post-production, where it allows colour correction work to accurately represent the colour space of the target medium, usually film. Adding REVOLUTION True in line with the monitor can bar colours that cannot be reproduced accurately on film, presenting the operator with a more accurate view of how the completed film will appear.
Steve Brett, Technical Director at Pandora International, explained that the size and cost of a traditional colour cube tool restricted their use to very few applications in large video editing facilities. "Even with current memory costs the scale of the look-up tables necessary to implement a colour cube using conventional techniques soon becomes impractical," he said. "By exploiting the high degree of integration provided by Virtex-II Pro, especially the embedded PowerPC processor capable of implementing our unique software interpolation algorithms on-board the FPGA, we can now offer the functionality of a colour cube cost-effectively on a single board. This will open up many new markets, for example where users need to compensate for the unique colour space characteristics of different media such as video tape, DVD or film."
About Xilinx Virtex-II Pro Platform FPGAs
Xilinx Virtex-II Pro Platform FPGAs offer the ideal connectivity solutions, providing the high-speed programmable fabric and system-level building blocks needed to successfully interface to the latest generation of advanced memory devices. The Virtex-II Pro device is the world's first and only FPGA to offer integrated IBM PowerPC embedded technology and multi-gigabit transceivers at no additional charge. With over 10,000 customer engagements, Virtex-II Pro FPGAs are experiencing rapid adoption in a wide-range of applications.
About Xilinx Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit
www.xilinx.com.
