FPGA supports 3D and 4K displays at CES

 January 5, 2012 – San Jose, CA – Xilinx announced support for high performance video display processing for use in TVs and flat panel displays for both 3D and 4K2K applications. The 7series FPGA products – Zynq, Artix7, Kintex7 and Virtex7 are fast enough, have enough programmability , datapath space and high performance I/Os to handle the multi-channel systems of immersive video.

These systems have moved from low end 2 channel systems with simple backlight and display timing control through 8+ channels with full data interaction processing and control. A typical system included a front end processor (typically an ASSP) that accepts analog/CATV/Sat Digital/ Dig Terrestrial tuners/demodulators, Inputs from HDMI/DVI, LAN, USB, and other I/Os such as DP & card readers, a video backend processor for the flat panel driver and the a backend co-processor for 3D and advanced feature processing.

The new 4Kx2K systems need to paint a flat panel with a resolution equal to four (4) 1080p images at one time. A 2012/2013 model year 4K2K3D tv (3D-UHD) running at 120Hz refresh will require 100X the data bandwidth of a typical 60Hz 2D FPD. This display data has also be processed along with motion sensing, an environmental awareness for the viewing expierence and possible data access from a LAN or cloud.

Xiliinx Kintex 7 video IP

Xilinx is releasing a development kit that has reference designs and IP blocks for the creation of these core modules. Figure 1 shows a high level Kintex7 FPGA implementation of an LCD or Plasma display panel module. These include the Input Connectivity, Video Processing and Output Connections along with the user command and control processing with memory interface.

Xilinx multi FHD to UHD display

Applications such as display of multiple 1080p images on a single 4K panel (figure 2) or upscaling a 1080p image to 4K through a de-interlacer, video scaler and display driver are currently available in reference designs. The development environment is called ACDC for Acquisition Contributino Distribution and Consumption and has a base development board called the ACDC 1.0 that incorporates a Xilins Kintex 7 XCK325T with 16 GTXs. The platform is scheduled for late ‘12 early ‘13. The operating reference designs with a 4K display will be shown a CES 2012.