Pleora joins Altera partnership program

OTTAWA, CANADA: Pleora Technologies, a leader in networked video connectivity solutions for mission-critical systems, has been selected by Altera Corp. to participate in the Altera Megafunction Partners Program, known as AMPP.

Under AMPP, Altera forms partnerships with preferred third-party companies that develop IP (intellectual property) packages for its FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays). Products offered by AMPP partners are promoted by Altera through its broad marketing and sales channel, which reaches thousands of customers worldwide.

Effective today, Altera customers will get direct and easy access to Pleora's iPORT NTx-Pro IP package, a portfolio of firmware, hardware, software, and design review services. The package leverages Altera's Cyclone III FPGAs to deliver customized solutions for real-time networked video connectivity over standard Ethernet networks.

"As an Altera AMPP partner, Pleora will have a much higher profile with innovative OEMs and systems integrators in the early stages of the design cycle," said Rob Lee, vice president of marketing and sales, Pleora Technologies. "The timing is excellent because we're about to launch significant enhancements to our end-to-end connectivity solution, including key upgrades to our developer tool set and support for the newest version of the GigE Vision standard."

"Pleora has been designing IP cores for video connectivity for our FPGAs since 2002," said Jim Smith, director of Altera Professional Services, Altera. "Altera FPGA customers looking for third-party video connectivity solutions will now be able to shorten their design cycle significantly by having direct access to Pleora's knowledge, experience, and IP."

Flexible, tailored solutions
Pleora's iPORT NTx-Pro IP package includes an evaluation kit, an IP core, an HDL (hardware description language) reference design for the Cyclone III FPGA, and a board reference design. The package is rounded out by Pleora's expert design review services, which can be accessed at any depth and at any stage of the design cycle.

Depending on customer requirements, the IP package can also include Pleora's high-performance eBUS™ drivers, which replace or augment commercial grade PC NIC (network interface card/chip) drivers, allowing video to be transferred in real time directly to applications, and the eBUS-PureGEV™ SDK (software development kit), a feature-rich toolkit that provides the building blocks needed to quickly and easily develop customized applications.

A major upgrade to the eBUS-PureGEV SDK – Version 1.3 – will be launched by Pleora in June. The new version will introduce support for Linux operating systems, enhance debugging and logging capabilities, and expand the library of sample applications to include code for serial communications to a camera head and simultaneous connections to multiple devices.

In April, Pleora's end-to-end networked video connectivity solution, including the iPORT NTx-Pro IP package, became fully compliant with Version 1.2 of the GigE Vision standard. The standard is a mature and proven communications framework for the delivery of video over Ethernet. Ratified in January 2010, Version 1.2 extends the scope of the standard to include a rich new variety of video network elements, including video display receivers, video servers, video processing units, management entities, and network-controlled devices.