Namsong designs Spartan-6 into newest line of multi-format portable field monitors for professional broadcast apps

SAN JOSE, USA: Xilinx Inc. announced that longtime customer, Namsong Industrial Co. Ltd, has designed Xilinx's Spartan-6 field programmable gate array (FPGA) into its newest line of professional, multi-format portable field monitors recently introduced at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2011 conference.

Namsong's new high-performance multi-format XMD-9900 9" portable field monitor can be used on a rack or desktop, mounted to a camera or deployed in the field for a variety of applications (e.g., studio monitor wall, remote/outside broadcast van, electronic news-gathering/electronic field-production, mobile 'fly pack' production studio, video tape recorder/double data rate memory replay).

Namsong credits the performance and flexibility of Spartan-6 with enabling high-reliability, high-precision image processing features in the XMD-9900, including built-in vectorscope, standard auto-sensing HD-SDI (high-definition, serial digital interface) input, analog-to-digital conversion, and re-clocked output. Namsong selected Spartan-6 over competing FPGA and application-specific alternatives due to superior video image processing performance enabled by its built-in HD-SDI receiver/transceivers and memory bandwidth controller.

"For more than a decade, Namsong Industrial has counted on Xilinx as a valued supplier and key contributor to our success in delivering more than 20 professional broadcast display systems to our customers over many generations," said Namsong Industrial Director of R&D Chang Joon Lee. "Our new XMD-9900 system is the latest example of Namsong engineering innovation with Xilinx FPGAs. In the future, we expect to further integrate system functionality onto Xilinx 28nm Zynq and 7 series FPGAs."

With Spartan-6, Namsong was able to significantly increase architectural efficiency for tri-speed video by taking advantage of consolidated clock management tiles (CMT), including phase-locked loops (PLLs) with various digital clock managers (DCMs). In addition, the design team was able to build in more features into the system using extra memory space enabled by Spartan-6's multi-boot memory configuration.

Since its founding in 1978 as a provider of development and production services to leading closed circuit television (CCTV) original equipment manufacturing (OEM) factories, Namsong Industrial has evolved into a high-end, full-featured broadcast monitor company.

Today, Namsong is a leading manufacturer of high-reliability, high-precision professional display systems for broadcast, medical, security and industrial applications under popular brands in Korea, Japan and the US, among them Supertron and Protech. Its broad portfolio of products ranges from high resolution mono/color CRT (cathode ray tube) systems to state-of-the-art HD flat panel display systems.