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Customer Success Story- Applied Integration
Applied Integration Corporation In its product development, AIC stays on the edge of emerging markets by its vigil of market trends. As well as AIC’s currently offered products and services, it can design and manufacture custom products, alter existing products and design support software to meet the unique needs of a particular application. Applied Integration Corporation’s remote-access digital video InCharge Systems combine state-of-the-art digital video recording and video data storage with the ability to transmit live video over telephone lines, data lines, LAN and WAN. With high image quality at all levels of video compression, the InCharge System is the first affordable solution for those users requiring mass storage of intelligent digital video. This recorder uses digital Wavelet Compression Technology, providing superior resolution, compression, capture rates, and network video transmission. The following success story is from Frederick J. Pingal, founder and
President of Applied Integration Corporation. Learn more about this innovative
remote-access digital video developer and manufacturer by visiting www.appliedi.com
I began designing video systems in 1977, when I became involved in creating a machine-vision system for inspecting continuous-matrix fiberglass rolled roofing product at an early stage in its production process. This was created for Owens Corning Fiberglass in Columbus, OH. The system used computers looking through cameras at the product to adjust the material quality as it was being produced. In the creation of this system, the limits of that technology were reached. These limits were caused by problems arising from broken connections (bad solder joints, bad connectors, broken wires) and shifting parameters caused by temperature sensitivity. Only a few thousand gates were possible; even at that level, the system was fragile and often unreliable. At this time, these designs were nurtured by The TTL Data Book for Design Engineers, second edition, by the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Group. By 1981, I and two other computer engineers had formed a little company and we became involved in trying to solve the problem of refreshing the video display of a CAD system that we were developing. At that time, CAD video displays were literally taking 10 minutes to refresh the screen once! It was actually easier to do the work by hand than to use a CAD system! In solving this problem, we developed a very high speed video graphics engine that was able to execute a Bresenham Algorithm in place. Our machine was able to run hundreds of times faster than a Motorola 68000 chip, because we designed the algorithm right into the circuits. We created a parallel processing design, where all steps are performed simultaneously in parallel. The introduction of programmable array logic devices (PALs) permitted us to solve this problem. We adopted PALs into our design, but we couldn’t afford the programming machine, which was the size of a big suitcase, and whose cost approached the annual budget of our company! So we designed our own programming machine instead. We programmed it to make PALs in Forth. Using this method, we were able to make systems with up to 200,000 gates before the inherent physical constraints of bad connections and parameter drift would interfere in the function of the circuits. By 1986, my company was producing designs containing hundreds of PALs and the problems due to the inherent physical constraints were causing me to hit the limits of that technology. That’s when Xilinx FPGA devices came to the rescue, allowing up to 7,000 gates in one device! We then produced designs that had PALs and hundreds of other components on one circuit board. Complete systems could have a million gates. Using this technology we designed a highly dependable, reliable helical-scan sonar display for the Navy using Xilinx XC3042 FPGA. This allowed me to put a complete sonar display system on two VME Bus cards. Without Xilinx, this would have been impossible! This sonar display system incorporated field reconfigurability, which was achieved by reloading the Xilinx XC3042 FPGA with files from the Operating System. The crucial advance, in my experience, was that Xilinx allowed us to conquer the old gremlins of bad connections and temperature-dependent parameter drift. Secondly, the FPGAs permitted us to maximize function while minimizing space-usage on the circuit board. Since 1986, we have consistently incorporated Xilinx FPGAs into most of the designs which we have undertaken. In the beginning we used XACT software, and are now using Foundation 2.1i. I have found the most beneficial aspect of the software to be the combination of the simulator and the schematic editor, which allows me to deal with large macros and comprehend the entire project in a glance. Current designs are now incorporating Xilinx Spartan series because of their low cost and high density. The Virtex architecture is being used in my designs for a product debuting in 2000. This design is a multiplexed digital video router which routes multiple CCIR656 digital signals for a video storage and transmission system. It can accept up to eight video inputs. This product, presently referred to as the “AI Quad”, can both record and transmit from up to eight video inputs simultaneously. A hierarchical memory system is employed, allowing integration of deep FIFOs made up of the logical units configured as dual-ported RAM.The reconfigurability of the Xilinx component permits user-selectable, software-controlled application-specific solutions for the end-user. Xilinx multistandard select I/O interface, providing 3.3 volt compliance on one side and 5 volt compliance on the other side is an especially important feature in this design. The use of Xilinx high-performance 200 megahertz parts allows me to design video compression and transmission into a single component. The Virtex logic enables the reduction of complex video systems of up to 350 components down to as few as 25 components. This results in higher performance and lower power consumption, resulting in lower cost. This is the name of the game in my industry, where we are constantly racing to deploy ever-higher performing digital video storage and transmission at an ever-diminishing cost. Xilinx allows me to consolidate functions while reducing manufacturing complexity, resulting in lower production costs. Due to the superb reliability of FPGAs, it is still the best choice for my designs, which achieve state-of-the-art elegance in moving vast amounts of video data. Drifting parameters and bad connections are now virtually unheard-of problems, thanks to Xilinx. |
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