July 12, 2016 - Chips&Media Inc. announced today they completed development of 2nd generation VP9 and HEVC(H.265) multi-format Decoder IP - WAVE512 and now are available to customers. This is the second rollout of their high-performance UHD (4K/8K) Video IP series called WAVE5 which are based on the sophisticated new architecture.
WAVE512 is hardware implementation of VP9 Profile0, Profile2 and HEVC decoder that achieves over than 4K 60fps real-time decoding in a single core. Chips&Media has ever released WAVE412 last year which supports VP9 and HEVC decoder already. WAVE512 is the 2nd generation of this multi format decoder IP. It can reduce bandwidth by up to 70%. It also runs at much lower clock frequency than the first-generation WAVE412, which can help save the power consumption a lot.
Above all, WAVE512 features improvement of decoder performance. With the fine-tuned, highly optimized design, required clock frequency for 4K60fps has been decreased a lot with almost the same IP size as the existing WAVE412. This benefit makes SoC clients save over than 50% of the IP size compared to the existing IP size and develop high-end, but small size multimedia SoCs.
Currently Google\'s VP9 codec is being used as one of dominant video standards in the UHD market. Almost all of low resolutions to 4K (3840x2160) videos in YouTube are serviced in VP9 format. Also, there are currently a variety of HTML5.0-based web browsers supporting VP9 such as Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. VP9 now occupies the strong position in internet streaming service market as a leader of next generation video standard
There are still ongoing demands on higher video quality and higher frame rate like 4K 60fps/8K 60fps. In order to keep pace with such demands, Chips&Media introduced the second generation WAVE512 timely after launch of WAVE412 HEVC/VP9 Decoder IP last year.
Following this WAVE510 and WAVE512 release, Chips&Media will roll out VP9 encoder together with 2nd generation high performance HEVC encoder in near future.
