Toshiba Launches New Line-Up of Image Recognition Processors for Automotive Applications

Toshiba developed the Visconti™ series of image recognition processors to advance the creation of camera-based vision systems for automotive applications. The processors recognize traffic lanes, vehicles, pedestrians, traffic signs and more. Both the Visconti™2 and 3 series devices incorporate image processing accelerators that detect pedestrians with high level detection ratio in real time.



In addition to these capabilities, the Visconti3 lowers the software-development hurdle for customers by integrating an ARM 32-bit RISC Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ (2 cores) dedicated to supporting applications interfacing with the image recognition processor.



The company targets annual sales of 2 million Visconti image recognition processors in fiscal 2015.



Background

Advances continue in bringing driver assistance and safety systems to road vehicles. The next impetus will come in the EU, where the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) requires automobile companies to introduce autonomous braking systems next year. These will initially cover other vehicles, and will be extended to include pedestrians in 2016. Initiatives like this are expected to spur 50-100% growth in the global market for image recognition processors between fiscal 2010 and 2015[2].



Toshiba has played a pioneering role in image recognition processors. It commercialized Visconti™ in 2004 and the improved Visconti™2 in 2011. The new Visconti™3 offers improvements in functionality, performance and software development efficiency.



Main Features

1. ARM Cortex™-A9 MPCore™

Upwardly compatible with the Visconti™2 series. Integration of the ARM Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ improves connectivity to car navigation systems, smartphones and cloud-based services and makes it easier for customers to implement features during software development.



2. Single/Double-Precision Floating Point Unit (FPU)

Image recognition algorithms and software in embedded image recognition processors must analyze large volumes of image data from the video source, frame-by-frame, in real time, but with limited power consumption and memory resources. Some algorithms for this are difficult to achieve without an FPU. For this reason Visconti™3 integrates a single/double-precision FPU into each core of the ARM processor.



Outline of New Product

##IMAGE_2_C##

Main Specifications

##IMAGE_3_C##

##IMAGE_4_C##



[1]: Visconti™ is a trademark of Toshiba Corporation.

[2]: Toshiba data

[3]: Cortex™ and MPCore™ are trademarks of ARM Limited.