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Ambarella S5 - next action cams will do 4kp120 and 8kp30
  • Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA), a leading developer of low-power, HD and Ultra HD video processing semiconductors, today introduced the S5 System-on-Chip (SoC) targeting professional high-quality 4K and multi-imager IP camera designs. The S5 offers advanced features including 4K multi-exposure High Dynamic Range (HDR) fusion, 360° de-warp and ultra-low light processing. Maximum performance is 4Kp120 or 8Kp30 of H.264/AVC and 4Kp60 frames of H.265/HEVC, while supporting flexible multi-streaming, rate control and transcoding functions. The S5 supports the high-quality Main10 HEVC Profile (10-bit H.265) for outstanding representation of high contrast scenes and a wide color gamut. In addition, it leverages Ambarella’s SmartHEVC™ technology to radically reduce 4Kp30 video bitrates to between 512 Kbps and 4 Mbps, minimizing network bandwidth requirements and saving on storage costs. The S5 image sensor interface and its advanced 1-Gigapixel/s Image Sensor Pipeline (ISP) can be configured as up to four independent sensor inputs to allow development of high resolution multi-imager cameras.

    The S5 will play a critical role in the industry’s shift to 4K and H.265," said Fermi Wang, President and CEO of Ambarella. "With it, our partners gain a leading-edge image processor that delivers low power consumption, superior image quality, smart H.265 compression and a powerful quad-core CPU.”

    The S5 includes a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM® Cortex®-A53 64-bit CPU with floating point and NEONTM available for user applications. A Linux-based Software Development Kit (SDK) allows customers to develop highly differentiated products including 4Kp60 traffic cameras, 4x4K multi-imagers and surround view cameras, with support for advanced features including intelligent video analytics, in-camera edge storage and transcoding.

    Ambarella will demonstrate the S5 at a private event during ISC West in Las Vegas, April 6-8, 2016.

    S5 Feature Summary

    • H.265/HEVC Main/Main10 Profile Level 5.1 encoding up to 4Kp60 with SmartHEVC™ low-bitrate streaming
    • H.264/AVC Baseline/Main/High Profile Level 5.1 encoding up to 4Kp120 or 8Kp30
    • Multi-streaming with on-the-fly settings for resolution, frame rate, quality and transcode
    • Sub-LVDS/SLVS-EC/MIPI®/HiSPi™ sensor interfaces configurable as up to 4 independent interfaces
    • ISP with line-interleaved multi-exposure HDR MCTF 3D noise reduction, High ISO low-light, defog and contrast enhancement
    • Multi-imager support for up to four 4K sensors with stabilization, de-warp and image stitching
    • 180/360° de-warping with multiple windows, electronic PTZ and rotation
    • 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU with floating point, NEON SIMD
    • Ambarella low-power architecture combined with 14nm FinFET technology enables 4Kp30 encoding, including DDR, at less than 1.4 Watts

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160405005080/en/Ambarella-S5-IP-Camera-SoC-Delivers-4K

  • 5 Replies sorted by
  • Something in between like 6K 60fps would be dreamy! But how long until chinese knock off action cameras can do that for under a hundred bucks? :-/ They can't even do 4K 30p properly at all! (is all upscaling everywhere)

    So will be a while until we see "proper" 4K (hopefully this year), and then even longer until we see 4K 60fps (maybe next year.. I hope), and even longer until higher resolutions and higher frame rates happen.

  • They can't even do 4K 30p properly at all! (is all upscaling everywhere)

    Most of them use cheap main LSI, and cheap sensors - this is the reason.

    But how long until chinese knock off action cameras can do that for under a hundred bucks? :-/

    Around 1-1.5 years to get 4K 60fps as common feature.

  • "...radically reduce 4Kp30 video bitrates to between 512 Kbps and 4 Mbps".. If the quality remain still fine..that's a great news.. I hope that this SOC will be implemented ASAP on new devices..and that the ratio Overall Video Quality / Bit Rate continue to improve in order to not to worry about the need of huge hard disk space..

  • Forget about good quality on lower bitrate

  • I suppose so...but as we say in Italy "hope is the last to die"... :-)