Aachen, Germany - December 11, 2006 - Video encoding in H.264/AVC is the most efficient way to reduce large volumes of video data for video systems while retaining high image quality. However, to encode HD uncompressed video into full featured H.264 in real-time, customers need optimized algorithms and powerful hardware. The programmable TMS320C6455 digital signal processor (DSP) from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), the only DSP in production with Serial Rapid IO™ (sRIO), is the ideal processing workhorse for high performance HD video encoding. MainConcept is focused on highly advanced video codecs, such as DVCPro, MPEG-2 and H.264 and licenses them to industry leading companies worldwide. | 
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ProjectNext v2 is MainConcept’s pre-production hardware platform that integrates eight C6455 DSPs from TI for H.264 video encoding connected through the MC-DMA engine in FPGAs. The scalable architecture allows parallel processing of video data in several DSPs. Incoming SDI video signals are encoded into the H.264 format in real-time. ProjectNext v2 is designed for live video broadcasting, streaming in HD resolution and also for offline production studios. The hardware consists of a Mainboard that plugs into a common PCI-X slot of the host PC and provides all external input and output connections. There are HD-SDI video in- and outputs as well as SDI and an Audio clock reference for synchronization in professional production environments. One or two DSP-ClusterBoards, each based on four C6455 DSPs, memory, interconnection FPGA, PCI bridge and power regulators, may be plugged to the front and rear side of this Mainboard. If multichannel encoding is required, several ProjectNext v2 boards can be used in parallel. An interconnection of the boards by sRIO connectors allows them to share large data or computing power in ways previously impossible without sRIO.
Andreas Bergmann, ProjectNext v2 Senior Hardware Developer chose the C6455 DSP for its powerful DDR2-533 memory and independent EMIFA port that grant the high data bandwidth needed for HD video compression. Furthermore, the Serial RapidIO ports are ideal to interconnect several boards with up to 10 Gbits/sec full duplex bus. MainConcept is renowned and highly experienced in codec algorithms running on PC platforms. Since HD video conversion requires higher performance in computing power than any PC can provide, MainConcept began developing the ProjectNext v2 hardware platform to increase processing power. TI’s C6455 DSP is based on TI’s TMS320C64x+™ core with 1GHz performance, is the perfect DSP to meet the requirements of video encoding.
"The enhanced C64+ DSP core of the C6455 DSP delivers 2048 kByte large internal L2 cache and speeds up many operations of video encoding,” said Cyril Clocher, Texas Instruments DSP business development manager, EMEA. "TI is pleased to supply the C6455 DSP technology and system expertise, as well as other components such as the high efficiency switching power regulators TPS54873, TPS54680 and the linear regulators TPS79533 TPS79525 and TPS79518 to MainConcept, a leading supplier of codec technology IP specializing in video encoders."
About the Texas Instruments DSP Third Party Network
MainConcept is a member of the TI DSP Third Party Network, a worldwide organization of independent companies that offer products and services supporting TI DSPs. TI third parties provide expertise across a variety of applications, including audio, control, telecom, video and imaging and wireless communications. Third party products and services include a broad range of application software, development hardware and software, and consulting services that support original equipment manufacturers’ efforts to bring differentiated products to the market quickly. For more information about the TI DSP Third Party Network, please visit www.ti.com/3p.
About MainConcept
MainConcept is a privately held company headquatered in Aachen, Germany, founded in 1993 by Markus Moenig., CEO. MainConcept has been working on the strategy: "Every Codec, Every Platform." Based on its leading position in the PC codec market, the company is now entering the embedded and broadcast markets by porting its video codecs to many new embedded systems, doing IP cores for FPGAs, and building its own hardware platform for real-time, broadcast-quality encoding. MainConcept helds subsidiaries in USA and Japan as well as offices in Hong Kong and Silicon Valley.
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