5
INTRODUCTION
The Alacron Fast-X is a highly flexible, programmable and expandable video capture and
processing device. Features of this device target the needs of original equipment
manufacturers and end users who anticipate a demand for diverse I/O requirements and the
need to support a high video data bandwidth.
The Fast-X is available with both Camera Link
TM
and GigE Vision
TM
digital video interfaces in
various configurations ranging from the Full Camera Link to a combination of Medium, Base, or
up to three asynchronous Base Camera Link connections. The four bi-directional GigE Vision
interfaces are available to receive video streams from GigE Vision-enabled cameras or
distribute video streams to other video processing devices and computers.
The Fast-X data-flow architecture combines parallel bit-processing in the front-end FPGA with
the Stretch S5610 software-configurable processor to execute complex image and digital signal
processing concurrently with the video capture.
The Fast-X is able to transfer video data either directly to the Host PC system memory or add
on-board video processing, object detection or video compression. Such on-board processing
could dramatically reduce resource demands on the Host computer system and carry important
benefits.
Reduction in computational and data carrying loads on a Host computer enables this video
capture system to handle a higher video bandwidth from faster, higher-resolution, or from
multiple simultaneous sources of video data. The on-board video processing will prevent the
Host computer system from experiencing unpredictable stalls and from losing video frames
caused by the memory buffer overload.
It is even more important for success on the emerging GigE Vision
TM
digital video interface
standard. GigE Vision interface makes use of commodity computer network interface and
network hardware. It is rightfully expected to give vision application developers an unparalleled
flexibility and tremendous potential cost savings by:
?
Connecting a GigE Vision camera to any computer with the GigE Interface and
appropriate driver,
?
Sharing of multiple GigE Vision cameras among computers on the network,
?
Video streaming over the GigE network between GigE Vision-capable computer
systems for distributed video processing and archiving.
Full utilization of the modest GigE Vision bandwidth and consequently many design
opportunities for the GigE Vision devices depend on the support from computer hardware that
can compress raw video into the GigE fabric. Only computer-assisted GigE Vision transmission
will assure that all frames make it through the network.
The intelligent and programmable data-flow-through architecture of the Fast-X bridges the high-
bandwidth of current Camera Link interface and the bright future of the multi-lane GigE Vision
fabric.
The fully programmable architecture of Fast-X enables an extensive customization by the end-
user or OEM including storage of proprietary or often used application extensions in the on-
board Flash memory.
