Defining new parameters in graphics processing

By pairing the E8860 GPU with additional on-board resources, such as an optional FPGA, the M596 delivers a wide variety of video I/O interfaces. These interfaces include DVI output channels as well as S-Video and STANAG 3350 inputs and outputs. For legacy systems with older display technology, the M596 drives composite (RS-170A [NTSC]/PAL) displays.

The optional FPGA also provides signal conditioning, compression and additional graphics overlay/underlay functionality.

Emil Kheyfets, Director of M&A Product Management, Aitech Defense Systems, stated: “With the increase in the number and types of video and graphics streams available, embedded systems need methods that not only manage data better, but can actually make it more useful to convey more information to the end user. Being able to render multiple streams in various formats means a system can provide deeper insights for more intuitive graphics processing and support mission data recording via output cloning.”

The E8860 has many native features including 2GB of integrated GDDR5 SDRAM, video and audio decompression units, graphics language acceleration with support for DirectX and OpenGL and parallel processing engines with OpenCL support.

On its own, the E8860 GPU supports a limited number of output interfaces. Aitech's implementation, with additional on-board video conversion resources included in the optional FPGA, provides a much wider variety of video I/O interfaces not natively supported by the GPU.

For video overlay/underlay, the GPU graphics can be superimposed on video input streams and drive the combined result to any of the six independent monitors. The M596 XMC connects to the host system with an eight-lane PCIe link for high speed transfer of graphics and video and is available with support for Windows and VxWorks.

It is particularly useful in harsh environments that have versatile video overlay and capture requirements, such as advanced civil or military aviation or ground vehicle systems.

Several hardware engines, such as graphics language acceleration, parallel processing engines and video and audio decompression units, are integrated into the rugged M596. It supports the most advanced graphics and video standards including DirectX, OpenGL and Shader.