April 26, 2012, GSA Silicon Summit, Mountain View, CA—Subramanian Iyer from IBM looked the issues to “Keeping Moore’s Law Alive” in his presentation at the Computer History Museum, a fitting place for a technology forecast. From an IDM perspective, the primary questions are: is there a problem, what to do about scaling, and what are [...]

 April 26, 2012, GSA Silicon Summit, Mountain View, CA—Subramani Kengeri from Global Foundries acknowledged a gap between efforts and capabilities in the lab versus those in the fab. To continue working on Moore’s law requires an SOC view and more collaboration. Currently, four areas are driving improvements in silicon; interconnect, lithography, packaging, and silicon technology [...]

 NAB, Las Vegas—We interviewed Render Rocket about their business and technology. Their claim to fame is a scalable 3-D render engine that operates in the cloud. The mission control module reserves and monitors time on the server(s) and enables cross-market use. The tools are being driven by the ongoing cost cutting and reductions in capital [...]

 NAB, Las Vegas—We talked with 3ality Technica about rigs and other equipment.3ality Digital acquired (bought) the company Element Technica. Now they are one single company, called 3ality Technica, which merges the complementary expertise of both companies. 3ality Digital created 3D rigs, using a tool kit which included algorithms and image processing technology to solve problems, [...]

 NAB, Las Vegas—We spoke with CentralParQ, a Dutch company about their workflow framework. Their solution includes a combination of hardware and software for managing and tracking assets from ingest through production. Part of their offering is a cloud-based set of modules that optimize metadata and other information. The system can track physical media through the [...]

 NAB, Las Vegas—We talked with Active Storage about their video optimized storage platforms, that are focused on the ingest through near-line editing and production. Content needs are increasing as broadcasters move to multiple screens, while the time available to show that content is dropping. The company is trying to address these issues by making products [...]

 We talked with Rakesh Agrawal from SnapStream about a metadata-based content search system that organizes storage and search functions. The system can handle 10 channels per unit, and units can be cascaded for greater capacity. The system uses closed captioning and time codes to generate data streams for search. This equipment can be integrated into [...]

 NAB, Las Vegas—We met with Fraunhofer Alliance Digital Cinema and talked about the research organization and its work in next generation technologies for video. The organization has an international presence with the main research facilities in Germany, in Erlangen, Berlin, and Ilmenau. Other facilities are in the US and in Asia. The four main institutes [...]

 April 17, 2012, NAB, Las Vegas—We talked with Simon Frost and Fabio Murra from Ericsson Television. The company has been supplying equipment to the broadcast industry for many years. They produce a number of product lines to address all phases of broadcast operations. Now they are helping networks move TV into a full digital flow [...]

 April 16, 2012, NAB, Las Vegas—Blackmagic Design introduced a host of new products for video capture and production. The highlight was a cinema-quality camera for $2995. The Cinema Camera touts a 13 stop dynamic range, 2.5K sensor, built-in SSD recorder, and Canon EF or Zeiss ZF lens mounts. Other features include a Thunderbolt connection, and [...]