Imagination launches the first members of its PowerVR Series4 video kernel

Imagination Technologies has announced the launch of the first members of its PowerVR Series4 video kernel. The PowerVR Series4 D4500MP video decoder and E4500MP video encoder are based on the highly successful PowerVR VXD and VXE Series3 multi-standard video codec technologies. These multi-channel architecture video silicon semiconductor intellectual property (IP) deliver enhanced features designed for modern applications, such as wireless display and video capture with unprecedented color accuracy, and high-definition (HD) and Ultra-HD displays (H.264 L5.2 4Kx2K@60fps).

While delivering industry-leading performance, these video processing cores retain their small area and ultra-low power consumption, making them ideal for consumer electronics applications. These cores have full scalability from single channel to quad channel, ensuring 1080P performance and low power requirements in a compact area, or industry-leading 4Kx2K performance.

"With the ability to process more than a billion colors at full resolution, the enhanced color processing capabilities of the PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP ensure significant performance improvements for today's demanding video applications, with sharper and more accurate video content for contemporary applications such as wireless display and high-quality video capture."

Tony King Smith, Vice President of Marketing at Imagination, said: "With the increased availability of OLED displays and 10bit displays that offer a wider colour gamut, consumers are demanding higher colour fidelity than ever before. "With their 'ultra-real-time' HD video processing performance, these cores are perfect for today's broadest display applications, while also providing more than enough performance support for future Ultra-HD 4Kx2K applications such as large wall displays and large Mosaic screens."

Realistic color processing at full resolution, supporting over a billion colors

The PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP support enhanced color depth, providing up to 10 bits of color accuracy, and can present more than 1 billion colors, compared to the current traditional 8-bit system can only provide 16 million colors. The addition of color depth support allows the SoC to maintain high-precision internal processing throughout the entire process from the video source to the display output, enabling true and realistic color reproduction. The enhanced color performance provides the required color fidelity to the latest generation of 10-bit and OLED displays to ensure maximum performance. The use of 10 bits can also help significantly reduce color banding in traditional 8-bit systems.

To further enhance the available color rendering capabilities, the video processor core has increased the color resolution to 4:4:4 (or 4:2:2), providing full resolution data for all video unit components. This makes the conversion between YCbCr and RGB much easier and more precise due to the absence of interpolation, making it perfectly suited for wireless display subsystems. Repeated conversions between traditional color formats (and resolutions) can lead to detail loss and blurring due to interpolation errors, while using 4:4:4 guarantees the elimination of such errors.

The enhanced resolution and fidelity performance of this family of cores enables applications such as camcorders, digital cameras, DSLRS and mobile phones to maximize the performance of their image sensors, which typically provide at least 10 bits of color depth, enabling them to deliver professional-grade image quality that has never been achieved before. This provides product differentiation for manufacturers and added value for consumers.

Coding and decoding performance for future applications

The PowerVR D4500MP and E4500MP enhance decoding and encoding performance for full HD 1080P video applications, respectively, ensuring realistic UHD quality, multi-stream HD channel browsing, and high frame rate support for high-speed continuous fine slow motion for sporting events and other special content. These new cores also deliver industry-leading performance for ultra-high definition 4Kx2K video, which is the core technology for future video applications, providing four times the visual information capacity of traditional HDTVS, as well as "information wall" flat display applications that tightly integrate the TV with applications, social media and channel browsing.