Ambarella, a California-based video technology semiconductor company, has introduced a new System-on-Chip (SoC), aiming to bring artificial intelligence video processing and high resolution recording to the mainstream.
Ambarella, a California-based video technology semiconductor company, has introduced a new System-on-Chip (SoC), aiming to bring artificial intelligence video processing and high resolution recording to the mainstream.
The new SoC, CV25, is a family version of the company’s CV22 product, which focuses on AI processing and high-resolution video quality for professional security cameras. Like the family member, therefore, CV25 offers facial and object recognition, 4K recording, HDR and WDR processing and low-power consumption.
Both products do the work on the edge, reducing the cost and the time to send data into the cloud.
CV25, however, costs much less than CV22, making the advanced video technology from the professional security camera market to the consumer home camera market.
Ambarella has adopted less expensive memory chip to make CV25, in order to “make it affordable as possible for all our customers,” said Jerome Gigot, senior director of marketing at Ambarella.
Being able to recognize various objects in our daily lives allows CV25 to be manufactured into different device options. As a smart doorbell or a smart outdoor security camera, it recognizes familiar people’s faces, packages and models and license plates of cars; as an indoor home camera, it tells whether a senior person fell down with its pose recognition technology.
CV25 encodes video clips in both AVC and HEVC formats in low bitrates to minimize cloud storage costs. Its Image Signal Processor (ISP) is able to deliver high-quality images in low light conditions. And the SoC includes a suite of cyber-security features, such as secure boot, TrustZone and I/O virtualization.
“Components that can deliver these features at a low power cost could have a big impact on the transition to smart home cameras with advanced features,” said Blake Kozak, principal analyst of smart home and security technology at IHS Markit.
“The ability to zoom, track and identify people and objects has been a challenge for outdoor smart home cameras. This is changing rapidly though and it is quickly becoming table stakes to have analytics capable of reducing false alerts (such a tree or flag moving vs people) and to also create smarter alerts with the ability to filter recordings using meta data,” Kozak explained.
IHS Markits forecasts 4K camera shipments of all smart home cameras will increase from 0.2% in 2017 to about 20% in 2022.
Ambarella expects that home security cameras built on CV25 will be introduced in early 2020.