The smartphone features latest-generation display technology, incorporating an 3D display with HD resolution.

The 102SH uses Apical’s Assertive Display technology as part of its advanced power saving and outdoor viewing functions, which are key to optimizing the performance of the handset for multimedia viewing.

Traditionally, providing a good viewing experience outdoors and saving battery power have been considered contradictory requirements, even though both are central to delivering a high quality multimedia experience on a mobile device.

Assertive Display by Apical solves both central requirements simultaneously, enabling multimedia content to be viewed even in bright sunshine on standard displays, and extending battery life by reducing display power significantly.

Said Michael Tusch, CEO of Apical: “Achieving good viewability of multimedia outdoors together with economical power consumption is a significant challenge for high-resolution 3D displays. We are proud of the performance enhancements Sharp has been able to achieve using our technology in the AQUOS PHONE SoftBank 102SH.”

Apical’s Assertive Display is a semiconductor IP core which adapts multimedia content to the display capabilities under actual viewing conditions. It takes into account both the screen brightness and the amount of light in the environment to adjust in real time the appearance of movies, photos and games for optimal viewability. It leverages a decade’s research and development by Apical into the way the human eye adapts to changes in the lighting environment to give a seamless and high-quality experience to the user. The Assertive Display core is integrated into Sharp’s proprietary media processor.

Apical is pleased to announce that one of the latest  smartphones in Japan, the docomo with series AQUOS PHONE SH-01D by Sharp, uses Apical’s Assertive Display technology to optimize the performance of its display.

The handset, which goes on sale in Japan this month for the carrier DOCOMO and incorporates a 4.5” HD (1280 x 720) autostereoscopic 3D touchscreen, is the latest in Sharp’s successful AQUOS PHONE series.

The SH-01D uses Apical’s Assertive Display technology as part of its advanced power saving and outdoor viewing functions, which are key to optimizing the performance of the handset for multimedia viewing.

Traditionally, providing a good viewing experience outdoors and saving battery power have been considered contradictory requirements, even though both are central to delivering a high quality multimedia experience on a mobile device.

Assertive Display by Apical solves both central requirements simultaneously, enabling multimedia content to be viewed even in bright sunshine on standard displays, and extending battery life by reducing display power significantly.

Said Michael Tusch, CEO of Apical: “We have been working with Sharp for several years and were very impressed by the way in which Sharp was able rapidly to grasp how to use our unique technology. Sharp has again produced a great product which raises the bar worldwide for smartphone multimedia performance.”

Apical’s Assertive Display is a semiconductor IP core which adapts multimedia content to the display capabilities under actual viewing conditions. It takes into account both the screen brightness and the amount of light in the environment to adjust in real time the appearance of movies, photos and games for optimal viewability. It leverages a decade’s research and development by Apical into the way the human eye adapts to changes in the lighting environment to give a seamless and high-quality experience to the user. The Assertive Display core is integrated into Sharp’s proprietary media processor.

Hisilicon’s Hi3516 is a System-on-Chip (SoC) devices combining a powerful ARM core, a video encoder subsystem and an imaging subsystem based on Apical’s latest-generation Image Signal Processor (ISP) core. The Hi3516 delivers full HD video at 30fps and supports sensors up to 16 Megapixel resolution.

Apical’s ISP cores are unique in that they combine high-performance image processing at low power with native support of high dynamic range (HDR) capture technology. This combination addresses the central requirements of the emerging surveillance IP camera market more effectively than the approaches adopted by other manufacturers.

Says Michael Tusch, CEO of Apical: “We’re very pleased that Hisilicon selected our technology as the basis for the Hi3516 imaging subsystem. Apical ISPs of course leverage our industry-leading high dynamic range technology but I am equally satisfied that we have been able to combine this with state-of-the-art noise reduction, color management and other key elements to obtain the best possible images under the widest range of conditions, from high contrast to low light.”

Says Mr Yangfengguo, Director of Hisilicon surveillance PL: “In designing our new generation of surveillance camera processors, we recognized that the ISP is one of the most important parts of the system.We like working with Apical because they aim to deliver the best technology in the market and are ready to work closely with us to achieve the best possible results for our customers.”

For further information about the Hi3516 camera SoC, see www.hisilicon.com.

About Apical
Apical is a leader in advanced image and video processing technology for embedded applications. The company’s products are derived from original research into the human visual system and are designed to maximize the performance of a wide range of image capture and display devices. Apical works primarily with leading OEMs and semiconductor manufacturers for whom high-performance imaging is a key differentiator. Apical is a privately-held company based in the UK.

www.apical.co.uk

Contact: info@apical.co.uk

VEE allows Tablet Phone users a great viewing experience with the WVGA resolution, 5-inch LCD display in all viewing conditions, in contrast to other smartphones whose viewability “washes out” in challenging ambient light situations. DPO technology enables Pantech to provide Tablet Phone users a product with a greatly extended single-charge battery life, which is especially important on a smartphone that features typically higher-power consuming items such as a 5” display and 1.5GHz dual-core processor.

“OEMs and ODMs focused on improving the user experience are constantly looking for solutions to improve outdoor display visibility and extended battery life,” said Brian Faith, VP of worldwide sales and marketing for QuickLogic. “We are very excited to announce our first smartphone production win with VEE and DPO alongside Pantech, and look forward to many more in the future.”

Availability
QuickLogic’s VEE and DPO technologies are available today as part of the ArcticLink® II VX2 and VX4 platforms. Contact QuickLogic or visit our website at http://www.quicklogic.com for more information on all of the technologies mentioned.

About VEE and DPO
QuickLogic’s VEE technology, based on the iridix® core from Apical Limited, greatly enhances the viewability of LCD and OLED displays under challenging lighting conditions such as bright ambient light by dynamically optimizing video characteristics to provide a natural viewing experience based on the human visual system. Used together with VEE, QuickLogic’s DPO technology enables system-level battery life extension by an average of 25% without compromising the user experience.

About QuickLogic
QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ: QUIK) is the inventor and pioneer of innovative, customizable semiconductor solutions for mobile and portable electronics OEMs and ODMs. These silicon plus software solutions are called Customer Specific Standard Products (CSSPs). CSSPs enable our customers to bring their products to market more quickly and remain in the market longer, with the low power, cost and size demanded by the mobile and portable electronics market. For more information about QuickLogic and CSSPs, visit www.quicklogic.com.

http://www.quicklogic.com/quicklogic-receives-first-high-volume-production-order-from-pantech-for-tablet-phone/

www.embedded-vision.com

“Adding computer vision to embedded systems creates phenomenal new products, markets, and opportunities,” according to Jeff Bier, president of BDTI. “Just look at the Microsoft Kinect™, which added vision to the Xbox 360™—it became the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, shipping more than 10 million units in 5 months. But that’s just a small part of the story. From automobiles that prevent accidents to security cameras that prevent crimes, embedded vision will proliferate across a multitude of markets.”

BDTI, Xilinx, and IMS Research initiated the Embedded Vision Alliance (EVA) and are being joined by Analog Devices, Apical, Avnet Electronics Marketing, CEVA, CogniVue, Freescale, National Instruments, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Tokyo Electron Device, MathWorks, Ximea, and XMOS as founding members. These companies share the belief that incorporating vision capabilities into future products will bring dramatic benefits to users and provide high-growth opportunities in consumer, medical, automotive, entertainment, industrial, and retail markets.
“The momentum behind embedded vision applications is growing at an astounding rate and industry collaboration is needed to enable the technology’s smooth adoption in new markets,” said Vin Ratford, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and business development at Xilinx. “Xilinx is excited to be a founding member of the new Embedded Vision Alliance and looks forward to a long, successful partnership with the Alliance members. Through this collaboration—and by delivering the right combination of performance, price points and flexibility to intelligently manage and act upon vast amounts of real-time image data within the parameters of industry standards—our programmable platforms are poised to open up a new world for systems development.”

As a first step, the Embedded Vision Alliance is launching a website at www.embedded-vision.com. The site will serve as a source of practical information that will help design engineers incorporate vision capabilities in new systems. The EVA’s future plans include newsletters, educational webinars, industry reports, technology standards, and other related activities. Everyone is free to access the information on the website, which is maintained through member and industry contributions. Membership information is also available at the site.

Ian Weightman, president of market research firm IMS Research, declared: “IMS Research is proud to be one of the founding members of the Embedded Vision Alliance. The EVA shares our vision of a future where embedded computer vision positively impacts many aspects of our daily lives. With hundreds of companies now developing embedded vision components, products and applications, the EVA can become the pivotal hub that not only educates companies on the potential of embedded vision, but also enables the industry to share ideas and best practices. This will be essential for the technology to reach its true potential, and we look forward to supporting the Embedded Vision Alliance in its objectives.”
About the Embedded Vision Alliance (www.embedded-vision.com): Founded in 2011 and led by BDTI (www.BDTI.com), the Alliance represents an industry collaboration to transform the electronics industry with products that are more intelligent and aware of their environments. It is a membership-based entity dedicated to inspiring and empowering embedded system designers to use embedded vision technology. A key means of achieving this is providing system design engineers with the practical information that they will need in order to effectively incorporate embedded vision technology in their designs.

AltaSens and Apical started their strategic partnership more than a year ago. Building on their complementary technologies and business synergies, the partners have developed the first 1080p60 HD WDR chipset in the imaging industry. This solution was first introduced in the China surveillance market, where several market-leading firms immediately saw the value of the system and developed camera platforms based on the system. The Hisense NVC2500 is one of the first cameras based on this WDR chipset.

The NVC2500 high-definition network camera is a high-performance video surveillance terminal, which supports H.264 BP/MP/HP and MJPEG image compression formats and can transmit high-quality digital video by multicast and unicast in variant network conditions. Its AltaSens CMOS image sensor enhances image dynamic range substantially with innovative dual-exposure-in-a-single-frame WDR technology, providing excellent monitoring results for any complex environment. The NVC2500 is suitable for real- time video monitoring and can be used in surveillance, traffic monitoring, electric power station, telecommunications surveillance, and other high-definition video monitoring situations.

“Hisense, an international multibillion-dollar conglomerate headquartered in Qingdao, China, is a major provider of information technology solutions and intelligent transportation systems. Cameras are at the heart of its surveillance product lines. Therefore, Hisense carefully examines and selects the best imaging technology. AltaSens’ unique technology underlies the best-in-class Wide Dynamic Range CMOS image sensor. The Apical ISP is sophisticated and provides numerous features with excellent performance. This turnkey solution, implemented on an FPGA, makes camera design easier and reduces the time to market,” said Mingxin Shao, Senior Engineer at Hisense.

“I am very thrilled with the enthusiasm of Hisense engineering and executive teams. They have developed and released high-end cameras in less than a year. This is outstanding! They are really experts in their field and demand perfection, and expect nothing less from their suppliers. I have no doubt that they will be successful with this WDR camera series in China, and also in the global surveillance market,” said Pezhman Amini, Marketing Manager at AltaSens, representing the AltaSens and Apical partnership.
About Hisense
Hisense Group owns more than 40 subsidiaries with total assets of RMB 45.55 billion Yuan. 2010 revenue reached RMB 63.7 billion Yuan. Hisense ranked No. 5 in the top 100 Chinese electronic information enterprises in 2010. Find out more about various products and services of Hisense at http://www.hisense-transtech.com/en/ or http://www.hisense.com/en/

About AltaSens

Since 2003, AltaSens has been a global leader in CMOS image sensor technology for a variety of applications, including videoconference, surveillance, broadcast and cinematography, medical, and industrial. AltaSens’ headquarters are in California, USA, with offices or distributors in North America, Taiwan, Japan, China, Europe, and Israel. Find out more about AltaSens High Definition and Wide Dynamic Range products at www.altasens.com.

About Apical

Apical is the industry leader in advanced dynamic range management and noise-reduction technology for embedded applications. The company’s products are derived from research into the human visual system and are designed to maximize the performance of a wide range of image capture and display devices. The product range comprises hardware IP cores and embedded software libraries. Apical is a privately-held company based in the UK.
www.apical-imaging.com

The chipset simplifies the development of a video surveillance camera system by providing a single vendor source for the IP and the FPGA. Customers won’t have to purchase the IP from a separate vendor and pay extra licensing fees, NRE charges or royalties. Before purchasing the HD WDR video surveillance chipset, customers can download the evaluation IP, Apical’s Image Signal Processing Evaluation Design, directly from Altera’s website, as well as register for an evaluation license online and evaluate the system. After evaluation, customers can download the Image Signal Processing IP core license online from Altera, and incorporate the IP into their FPGA design in the Quartus II®software. This ready-made, yet programmable chipset decreases development time and adds flexibility to the camera design. Leveraging the FPGA’s flexibility, our customers can customize the device with their own specific features, allowing them to further differentiate their products from those of their competitors.

Apical’s HD HDR full image signal pipeline IP is optimized to take advantage of the capabilities of the Altera FPGA. No other application specific standard product (ASSP) or DSP platform offers a comprehensive pipeline that incorporates WDR technology using a 1080p60 sensor and datapath. FPGAs are the only devices that can handle the high bandwidth of data from 1080p and 720p HDR CMOS sensors (for instance, a full HD raster is 2200×1125 pixels x 16+ bits per pixel x 60 frames per second, resulting in >2 Gbps bandwidth). Altera’s Cyclone series FPGAs deliver the bandwidth and processing performance needed.

“Altera has always been at the forefront anticipating customers’ needs and making it possible for them to lead in their markets. Now we’re making it easier for customers to access the solutions in one place,” said Brian Jentz, director of the industrial and automotive business units at Altera. “By selling our solution as a chipset with downloadable IP from Altera’s website, we eliminate barriers for customers to own the technology.”

“Designing on Altera’s FPGAs enables us to bring our latest technology to the market in the fastest way possible and to customize it for maximum performance for the specific application. Partnering with Altera allows us to process 1080p60 WDR image sensor signals without compromising the overall system performance,” said Michael Tusch, CEO of Apical. “Altera’s one-stop-shop approach is not only more convenient and more cost-effective; customers can also try before they buy.”

“AltaSens has pioneered HD and WDR CMOS imaging technology since 2003, but this is the first time that our sensors are supported in a chipset,” said Robert Baker, COO of AltaSens. “Apical has leveraged Altera’s innovative FPGA technology to develop a state-of-the-art image signal processor. This solution with an AltaSens sensor offers the best quality 1080p60 WDR video, is cost efficient, and reduces time-to-market due to the simplicity of the camera design.”

Pricing and Availability

Find out more about the new HD WDR video surveillance chipset at www.altera.com/surveillance. For chipset pricing and purchasing, please contact your Altera salesperson to get more information.

About Altera

Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more about Altera’s FPGA,CPLD and ASIC devices at www.altera.com. Follow Altera via Facebook, RSS and Twitter.

About Apical

Apical is the industry leader in advanced dynamic range management and noise-reduction technology for embedded applications. The company’s products are derived from research into the human visual system and are designed to maximize the performance of a wide range of image capture and display devices. The product range comprises hardware IP cores and embedded software libraries. Apical is a privately-held company based in the UK.
www.apical-imaging.com

About AltaSens

Since 2003, AltaSens has been a global leader in CMOS image sensor technology for a variety of applications, including videoconference, surveillance, broadcast and cinematography, medical, and industrial. AltaSens’ headquarters are in California, USA, with offices or distributors in North America, Taiwan, Japan, China, Europe, and Israel. Find out more about AltaSens High Definition and Wide Dynamic Range products at www.altasens.com.

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ALTERA, ARRIA, CYCLONE, HARDCOPY, MAX, MEGACORE, NIOS, QUARTUS and STRATIX words and logos are trademarks of Altera Corporation and registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other words and logos identified as trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders as described atwww.altera.com/legal.

Apical Ltd and Hynix Semiconductor Inc have entered into a licensing agreement for the use of Apical’s iridix and sinter image processing IP cores in future Hynix image sensor products.
iridix provides sophisticated dynamic range correction, based on original research into the way the human eye adapts to different lighting environments. An image sensor SoC (“System-on-Chip”) integrating iridix gives natural-looking still images and video without need for additional post-processing.

Apical’s iridix has formed the basis for many well-known product features in DSLRs, compact cameras and mobile phones. The iridix version 7 IP core combines professional/broadcast -level image quality with compact, low-power hardware implementation suitable for any digital imaging device.

sinter is a state-of-the-art noise reduction core which effectively addresses the primary noise sources affecting image quality in CMOS sensors. Originally developed for DSLRs, it has been further developed to tackle the particular noise characteristics of compact high-megapixel sensors used in mobile phones.

Says Michael Tusch, CEO Apical: “We are very glad to be working with Hynix and believe that using our technology will help Hynix to achieve strong market penetration with its future products.”

About Apical

Apical is the industry leader in advanced dynamic range management and noise reduction technology for embedded applications. The company’s products are derived from research into the human visual system and are designed to maximize the performance of a wide range of image capture and display devices. The product range comprises hardware IP cores and embedded software libraries. Apical is a privately-held company based in the UK.

Contact: Noman Hashim, noman@apical.co.uk, +44 207 038 3826

Standard CMOS image sensors are limited by the vast ranges of brightness levels, from low light to direct sunlight, that can black out or wash out a video subject. WDR CMOS image sensors correct this problem, but present a design challenge. The large amounts of data (up to 20 bits per color x 1.2 Mpixels at 60 frames per second) generated by these image sensors must be processed in the Image Sensor Pipeline (ISP), but are too much to be handled on-chip. The DSPs and ASSPs typically used in surveillance systems do not have the ability to handle the processing task efficiently. Altera’s Cyclone FPGAs have the capability to perform the intense number-crunching algorithms that convert the raw image data into a standard digital output needed to produce a clear video image.

“While previous sensors have shown good performance in either low-light or bright-light conditions, they’ve never been able to do both, until now,” said Michael Tusch, CEO of Apical Ltd. “Once we realized DSPs couldn’t perform the functions we needed, we turned to Altera’s Cyclone FPGAs because they offered the performance required to run Apical’s IP for the cost point and power restrictions for the surveillance market.”

The sensor processing design implemented in the FPGA is provided by Apical. The IP from Apical includes the full ISP, which performs the auto-exposure, auto-gain, and auto-white balancing that contribute to clear video images in extreme low-light and bright-light conditions. Apical’s IP also optimizes video images by incorporating Apical’s state-of-the-art iridix^® local tone mapping engine, which mimics the human eye, with high performance 2D or 3D noise reduction, and advanced color processing. The Cyclone III and Cyclone IV families of FPGAs perform all of these functions at industry leading clock rates, logic utilization, and power consumption.

“Altera’s FPGAs are enabling our customers to do more with their designs, especially in the industrial market where traditional DSPs and ASSPs have hit a wall,” said Michael Samuelian, director of the industrial and automotive business unit at Altera. “Altera’s low-cost and low-power Cyclone series of FPGAs are being used as the main image-processing element from image capture to image display. With our FPGAs and Apical’s IP, next-generation video surveillance equipment will get to market faster and have unlimited potential.”

For more information, or to obtain the HD WDR CMOS image sensor demo, reference design and evaluation kit, visitwww.altera.com/pr/surveillance.

News Release on Altera site

AltaSens’ A3372E3-4T WDR sensor uses patent-pending dual exposures in a single frame to create more than 100dB of wide dynamic range for 1080p HD imaging. Each exposure is independently adjustable to light levels in any scene, capturing the widest dynamic range. Single-frame dual exposures eliminate the need for a dedicated frame buffer in the camera and provide the smoothest motion video, devoid of motion artifacts. As a result, exposure latitude is boosted by several f-stops while the sensor provides an industry-leading frame rate of up to 60 fps. Under the low-light conditions commonly found in security applications, uncompromised full 1080p HD is achieved by maximizing each pixel exposure against the sensor’s wide dynamic range.

Apical provides custom-developed front-end IP blocks that enrich sensor dynamic range, reduce in-frame noise, and enhance resolution. Advanced technologies-currently adopted in a variety of WDR applications from sensors to displays-are also used to implement next-generation pixel-level compression and to render the WDR video stream. The resulting architecture offers significant advantages for its superior HD image quality, low-light performance, and flexible WDR auto exposure, compared to existing lower-resolution solutions.

“Apical’s technological innovation and proven expertise in the field of WDR imaging complements AltaSens’ advanced sensor capabilities,” says Giuseppe Rossi, Vice President of Technical Marketing at AltaSens. “Today’s announced product is the first step towards a new class of WDR HD sensors that offer both excellent low-light sensitivity and wide dynamic range. AltaSens’ security customers will greatly benefit from the A3372E3-4T WDR’s outstanding performance covering an even larger range of lighting conditions.”

“AltaSens’ WDR sensor technology is at the forefront of innovation,” states Michael Tusch, Managing Director at Apical. “Apical’s IP blocks are key enablers of AltaSens’ image-quality achievements and will be deployed together with AltaSens sensors to simultaneously support both WDR and low-light imaging applications. We believe that security camera manufacturers will greatly appreciate the fast time-to-market, ease-of-use, and hardware efficient approach of today’s announced solution.”
AltaSens will be demonstrating live WDR 1080p60 HD video streams at booth 40022 and at HDcctv Alliance Booth 42001 during the 2010 ISC West Security Show held in Las Vegas, NV on March 24-26.