Quanta Microsystems selects Cavium’s PureVu video processor for DMC module

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Cavium Networks announced that Quanta Microsystems Inc. (QMI) has adopted Cavium’s new PureVu CNW5XXX video processor family for wireless home video distribution products, including the Display MiniCard (DMC) module targeted at high resolution and low latency wireless display application for notebook PCs and netbooks.

QMI’s focus on wireless connectivity and reliable digital content distribution throughout the home makes it an ideal provider of end-to-end wireless display solutions and DMC modules that leverage Cavium’s innovative netHDTM technology for high resolution, secure, and reliable home video and graphics distribution.

At a compact size of 44.40mm x 26.80mm, Cavium’s DMC design is the world’s first fully standards-based Display MiniCard module intended for integration into next generation notebook PCs and netbooks. It leverages Cavium’s netHDTM technology and PureVuTM video processors to provide up to 1920x1200p60 H.264 encoding over standard WiFi 802.11n networking to transmit high quality video, graphics, and text for viewing both local content stored on the notebook and online content streamed from the Internet.

A key differentiating feature of Cavium’s wireless display solution using the DMC card is that it uses the existing WiFi module integrated into the notebook PC to transmit the compressed content, thereby minimizing the additional cost associated with providing wireless display capability.

Competing hardware solutions typically have to rely on additional wireless technologies, such as UWB or 60GHz wireless, and the associated hardware, which translates to higher cost. Competing software solutions, on the other hand, do use the integrated WiFi module. However, they fall short when it comes to video processing performance and resolution, encoding latency, and power consumption.

With H.264 encoding performance up to 1920x1200p60, negligible end-to-end latency, and complete offload of the host CPU, Cavium’s DMC card is setting a new price-performance bar for standards-based wireless display hardware acceleration.

“We are very excited to be working closely with Cavium on introducing innovative wireless display products to the market, including the new DMC module,” said CK Wang, Vice President at QMI.

“QMI has a very strong relationship with top tier notebook PC OEMs. The interest we see in the wireless display and digital content sharing application among our customers is already very strong and rapidly increasing. Cavium’s DMC design is ideally suited to address this emerging application with high quality and performance, while maintaining a cost structure that fits well within the tight constraints of the notebook PC market.”

In addition to its high compression performance and very low latency capabilities, the DMC’s PureVuTM video co-processor provides HDCP 2.0 hardware acceleration for Hollywood quality content protection. Based on Cavium’s widely deployed Nitrox security processing technology, the on-chip HDCP 2.0 hardware engine offloads the main CPU from all the computation intensive and key protection tasks such as bulk encryption and managing HDCP private key and negotiated shared key.

The near-zero impact on the host CPU utilization, resulting from the video compression and security offload engines, is the critical factor in minimizing the impact on battery life compared to software-based solutions.

“We are very pleased to have the support of a world class organization such as QMI in bringing our innovative netHDTM technology to wireless display and notebook PC platforms,” said Lars Herlitz, GM of Cavium’s Multimedia group.

“Cavium has an established track record of introducing game-changing technologies to each of its target market segments. What we see in QMI is a partner who shares our corporate philosophy and commitment to innovation, quality, and superior customer services.”