Semiconductor industry helps security industry achieve green environmental protection

The current environmental problems are very prominent. Realizing green environmental protection is not just a trend but a necessity. Semiconductor manufacturers’ digital electronic products are using lower cost components to achieve higher quality, more options, and faster speeds using a variety of innovative technologies to achieve a lower cost, greener video terminal system.

Most industries are now beginning to go "green," but semiconductor manufacturers have not paid much attention to this challenge in recent years. Following Moore's Law, using a variety of innovative technologies, the indicators of digital technology, including power consumption, size, cost, density, processing speed, and image sensor support resolution (or number of pixels) are exponentially improved.

Embedded processor technology The deployment of current Internet Protocol (IP) video security systems is ubiquitous, and the use of the most powerful new embedded processor technology helps original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) ) Manufacturers design and produce end-to-end solutions for energy-efficient IP network cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs).

In the past decade, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process technology has advanced significantly, which has allowed manufacturers to reduce the size of embedded processor geometries once every 2 to 3 years. The process technology has shrunk from 130 nanometers in 2000 to 45 nanometers in the near future, which enables embedded processors to run at lower power with lower power consumption. In addition to lower voltages, deep submicron geometry can integrate hundreds of millions of transistors on a single chip, enabling semiconductor products dedicated to embedded processing to integrate more intelligent IP while improving performance. This gave birth to more powerful and more powerful video processors such as on-chip DVRs and on-chip IP cameras.

Energy-Efficient Solution Development Strategies Along the video security value chain, embedded processor technology not only helps OEMs and ODMs to design more powerful intelligent systems with fewer power-optimized components, but also helps integrators deploy End-to-end solutions reduce the overall impact on the environment without sacrificing features or increasing system costs. For example, an on-chip DVR is equivalent to the functionality of more than 10 discrete components, which can significantly reduce the board space and power consumption of DVR applications.

This is basically an ideal development strategy for energy-efficient projects. However, with deeper submicron process geometries and ever-increasing design speeds, when manufacturers need to use lower voltage thresholds, manufacturers face enormous challenges in dynamic and static power consumption. . Some advanced embedded processors are now taking advantage of a wide range of intelligent adaptive hardware and software technologies introduced from the wireless mobile phone industry to dynamically control voltage, frequency, and power consumption based on device activity, operating modes, and even temperature of the most complex technologies. This includes traditional power management techniques such as low-power modes and clock gating. The highly innovative solutions being deployed can help further reduce operational and leakage power consumption.

Some solutions are implemented at the silicon device level. The main solution involves Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), which not only supports highly-flexible clocking schemes and power-down modes, but also provides independent clock control for various subsystems in the device, enabling low operating voltages of less than 1 V. run.

Another solution is adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) that addresses silicon chip processes and temperature changes. Another solution is Dynamic Power Switching (DPS), which switches to a low-power mode according to the work process and reduces power leakage. The final solution is standby leakage management (SLM) and memory retention.

CODEC TECHNOLOGY With most current closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems turning to digital and IP traffic, innovations in semiconductor core technologies are helping to significantly reduce power consumption from cameras to infrastructure. In addition, video processors can help optimize video traffic and storage, reducing the need for other infrastructure. This is why the amount of data required to store and send video can be significantly reduced compared to uncompressed video or legacy codecs (MPEG-2, MPEG-4). And video codec technology H. The 264 and Scalable Video Coding (SVC) advanced codecs are also important enabling technologies for the greener approach to video security systems.

These codecs utilize existing processing functions in current low-power ICs, such as programmable DSPs and fixed-function ASICs, to achieve extremely high compression ratios. For example, the National Television System Committee (NTSC) standard-definition video is typically digitized with 4:2:2 YCrCb at a 720x480 resolution of 30 frames per second, which requires a data rate of more than 165 megabits per second. To store 90 minutes of video, you need more than 110GB of storage. H. 264 not only achieves a 60-to-1 compression ratio, but also maintains superior video quality, saving bandwidth and storage for greener applications. Again, H. The 264 high profile video compression is more than 4 times higher than the MPEG-4 standard profile.

Use according to the H issued in 2007. 264/AVC Video Compression Standards Appendix G Standardize SVC to add temporal scalability to video security applications, reducing frame rates without recoding (eg, by dropping certain packets in the bitstream). Utilizing SVC Temporary Scalability can provide a more environmentally-friendly management approach for storing terabytes of video data in a CCTV system, avoiding extra transcoding to optimize storage for one day, one week or one month later.

Video Analytics One of the most promising innovations for optimizing video traffic, data storage, and CCTV system efficiency is video analytics (VA) on edge devices, which integrates all acquisition, recording, and storage functions into a unified IP camera. Built-in video analytics technology is supported by the most advanced low-power embedded processors, which provide the camera with sufficient directional intelligence, so only the necessary video sequences are recorded, transmitted, and stored locally, eliminating the need to work around the clock. The most common and robust features are camera tamper detection, trigger zone alarms, target counting, and smart motion detection, which can be implemented on programmable cores such as DSPs, FPGAs, or dedicated accelerators that run continuously.

Semiconductor manufacturers place great emphasis on this challenge, which can help end-users reduce the cost of ownership of video security systems and have a positive and direct impact on the environment. With the introduction of high-definition video processors and wide-range-motion (WDR) sensors, OEMs and ODMs can now design and produce megapixel IP cameras, replacing multiple analog CCTVs at higher image quality. For example, a megapixel (1280x720) camera can replace two standard definition (720x480) analog cameras and achieve a 33% improvement in field of view (320 horizontal pixels). Some on-chip IP cameras have recently had the ability to provide real-time 4 megapixel video, providing a solution to further reduce energy consumption.

In addition, if the same IP camera incorporates Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology, it can save a lot of cables compared to analog cameras that require both video coaxial cable and power lines. In addition, if OEMs and ODMs choose programmable high-flexibility video processors instead of fixed-function ASICs, they can also support integrated analog CCTV, motion JPEG (MJPEG), MPEG-4, and H. The hybrid configuration of 264 and even non-standard IP cameras not only maximizes re-use, but also avoids the adverse environmental impact of a complete replacement of existing infrastructure.