The PC Camera

A New Class of Smart Camera

VISION 2011, Stuttgart, November 10

(…Or How to put 90 Gflops of Processing to Good Use)

Let’s Start with ‘Why’

XIMEA thinks you should be free to demand cutting-edge performance, industrial robustness and true hardware/software compatibility from your next compact vision system without paying a premium.

Where the Machine Vision Market Is Today

Maturity =

Empowerment =

Inflection Point

So What’s Next In the Evolution of Machine Vision Systems?

First, Ask Yourself:

• How optimal is traditional integration of components?

• Don’t we have huge overhead on protocols/stacks/Links/MACs/PHYs?

• Plethora of interfaces, components, sparse soft- and hardware-compatibility matrices

???WHY???

This ….. Not This

The PC Camera A fully-functional, high-performance industrial PC inside the camera

PC Camera

Key components Integration tools PC Camera

Aspects of PC Camera

• Fully optimized data path from sensor to the application – Zero CPU overhead on image data delivery

– True zero copy paradigm

– Lowest possible latency

• Potential for integrated PLC to achieve sub-microsecond jitter

• Complexity of hard- and software interfaces handled by PC Camera vendor

Paradigm Shift

Paradigm Shift

PC Cameras Based on x86

• Sony, Matrox, NI, Leutron, Tattile, XIMEA all offer PC Cameras

• Wealth of existing frameworks and applications (usually tied to vendor’s full image processing library)

• Well-known operating systems (Linux, Windows, Full/Embedded)

• Well-known application development tools (C++, etc.) • New algorithms are first developed on PC, not limited to

sub-set of algorithms chosen by smart camera vendor

Atom PC Cameras – Pinnacle of Perfection?

• Raw CPU performance in the range of 3GFlops

• What if you want to connect more than one camera? – Runtime license cost

– High-speed interfaces are limited

• Upgradeability of RAM and SSD

Computing Platforms

Single-core era Multi-core era Heterogeneous computing era

Sing

le-th

read

Per

form

ance

Constrained by: • Power • Complexity

Constrained by: • Power • Parallel SW availability • Scalability

Enabled by: • Rich data Parallelism • Power-efficient GPUs

Constrained by: • Programming Models

We are here

New Era: Heterogeneous computing

• APU – Accelerated Processing Units

• Collocating of CPU and GPU on single die – CPU is used for OS and other infrastructure tasks

– GPU is used for number crunching

• Disadvantage of shared memory become an advantage providing zero copy framework

• GPU is fully programmable with OpenCL and Direct-Compute

AMD Fusion family of APUs

AMD Fusion family of APUs

• 40nm process, Zacate

• 1x or 2x 64bit cores, 1.6GHz

• 9W and 18W TDP

• 2x32KB I and 2x32KB D L1 caches

• 2x512KB 16-way associative caches

• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, AMD64

• 64 bit DDR3-1333 memory controller

• 80 shader cores running at 500MHz

• 4x PCIe Gen 2

• APU zero copy path

• OpenCL programmable

CURRERA-G

CURRERA-G: Anatomy of an (Ultra-Compact) Giant

• AMD G processor, T56N or T40N • A55E controller hub • 2GB DDR3 memory, up to 16GB SSD • 0.2 W/GFLOPS • 1x Gigabit Ethernet with PoE IEEE 802.3at Type 2 • 1x HDMI output • 1x eSATA 3Gbps port • 3x USB 2.0 or USB3.0 (for multiple cameras)

CURRERA-G anatomy

CURRERA-G: What It Means to You

• PC Camera with high performance processor made for vector calculations and logic with true zero-copy memory access

• Full OS or Embedded OS • OS Adds Software Flexibility While Improving Remote

Support • Lower latency than PC Host systems • More than 25 API’s to the most popular image processing

libraries on the market • And one or two other benefits…

Heat Issues: ✓

• Dissipating >20W from compact enclosure is challenging and requires active cooling

• Micro heat-pipes

• Solid state microblowers

• Use of external connections

Embedded PLC vs. Latency: ✓ • Runs fully autonomous and independent

from main CPU and its OS • Less than 1µs jitter provides higher

determinism than any RTOS can deliver • Senses opto-isolated part or position

detector inputs • Receives results of image processing

algorithm • Controls opto-isolated outputs and

programmable LED light controller • Graphical programming requires no

previous experience • Programmable watchdog functionality,

can also reboot main CPU and its OS

Compatibility: ✓

What’s Next?

• Hardware AMD, 2012 – New A-Series APUs: Trinity, 32nm, 2.2GHz-3.1GHz, 2 and 4

cores – Includes Turbo CORE and AMD Power Gating – DDR3-2133, Radeon HD 7000

• Intel response? • Software

– OpenCL infiltrates image processing libraries – Development of task and data parallel computational algorithms

• Full integration of computational architecture and operating systems.

Thank you

• Questions please

www.ximea.com