Gennum Corporation (Gennum) has developed a new 3 gigabits per-second (Gb/s) serial digital interface (SDI) receive solutions for broadcast video applications. Achieving a reach of up to 150 meters over coaxial cable for 3 Gb/s SDI, the new solutions combine company's equalization technology into its advanced receiver solutions, resulting in low power consumption and board space savings for new video broadcast equipment such as switchers, multiviewers and monitors.
The new integrated equalizing receivers will be showcased in Gennum’s booth (#SU9111) at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference, to be held in Las Vegas, from April 20 to April 23, 2009.
As a pioneer in HD and a key contributor to SMPTE standards, we recognize the technical challenges associated with the migration to 3 Gb/s from 1.5 Gb/s HD data rates, said Vijay Sharma, director of A/V connectivity, at Gennum. With this solution, we have applied our signal integrity expertise to resolve jitter issues that have limited existing coax solutions to about 120 meters at 3 Gb/s, to date. With the ability to use longer run coax to transmit high performance 3 Gb/s signals, broadcast studios can leverage their existing cable infrastructure, resulting in tremendous savings while still realizing a studio upgrade.
High-speed 3 Gb/s signals typically run for shorter lengths on coaxial cable compared to high definition (HD) data rates before needing to be regenerated. Gennum’s new equalizing-receiver solutions dramatically extend the distance achievable without regeneration, providing an opportunity for broadcast studios to re-use their existing infrastructure. Studios that have been designed for HD data rates or retrofitted for HD data rates from SD can now leverage Gennum’s new receivers to achieve unprecedented cable reach at 3 Gb/s rates, allowing thousands of meters of installed coaxial cable to be used.
Providing a clean and restore function on high rate signals, Gennum’s new silicon-based solutions can be integrated into a variety of 3 Gb/s studio equipment, such as monitors, multiviewers, encoders/decoders and switchers. These can then act as drop-in replacements to existing HD-grade end equipment without any requirement for studio re-design. The multi-rate support of the devices provides for backward compatibility, ensuring continued value from existing equipment.
New Solutions Integrate Advance Receiver and Gennum’s New Equalization Technology:
In 2008, Gennum announced the first single-chip 3 Gb/s transmit and receive solutions, which began shipping to customers worldwide in 2008. Broadening the company’s 3 Gb/s product portfolio, new solutions provide an even greater level of integration with equalization functionality now included in the receivers. In addition to the board space savings, achieved by eliminating the need for a separate, discrete equalizer, the new receiver solutions can reduce cost and yield dramatic power savings.
Gennum’s two new products, the GS2971 and GS2961, bring unprecedented cable reach to 3 Gb/s video broadcast products. The GS2971 is a tri-rate receiver with integrated equalizer technology that supports 3Gbs SDI, HD and SD specifications. To meet a wide range of studio product needs, the GS2971 enables 150+ meters of cable reach at 3G-SDI data rates, 250+ meters of cable reach at HD-SDI data rates and 480+ meters of cable reach at SD-SDI data rates. The GS2971 performs comprehensive digital SMPTE video processing and audio de-embedding in a small, cost effective package.
The second solution, the GS2961, is a tri-rate receiver that offers the same feature set as the GS2971 solution with the exception of audio de-embedding.
Turnkey solutions mitigate the need for costly field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs):
As standard off-the-shelf products, Gennum’s solutions represent a cost-effective solution to implementing a 3 Gb/s design. In many cases, designers are able to fit their proprietary code in a small, low-cost FPGA but have to move to a large, expensive FPGA because of the additional FPGA resources required to perform digital SMPTE video and audio processing. Gennum’s line of receivers integrates all this processing into a power-efficient solution that allows designers to focus on differentiating their designs. In some scenarios, using Gennum’s receivers saves more than 45% in power consumption, consuming just 545 mW in standard operating mode, and nearly 50% in board space vs. competitive solutions.
Pricing and Availability:
Evaluation boards for the GS2971 and GS2961 are currently priced at $300 each and will be available in May. The GS2971 evaluation board interconnects with the Xilinx Spartan-3A and the Altera Cyclone III evaluation boards, which should enable designers to quickly evaluate designs without having to create a custom adapter board.
About the 3Gb/s SMPTE Standard:
Over the past few years, the demand for high-definition content at higher bit rates has escalated. Broadcast studios and other video production facilities have wanted to extend the life of their infrastructure by using the same hardware currently used for HD-SDI. Thus, the standardizing bodies, SMPTE and ITU, ratified a new 3Gb/s SDI standard, the SMPTE 424M (physical interface), SMPTE 425M (format mapping) and ITU-R BT.1120-3-2005, that allows for the use of the same 75-ohm coaxial cable for transmission as currently in use. This new standard is generally referred to as 3Gb/s SDI enables higher resolution of pictures required for 1080p 50/60.
Gennum is a Canada-based designer of semiconductor solutions and intellectual property cores.