Panasonic System LSI Business Division announces industry first 4K60p HEVC decoder “ProXStream EX”

Panasonic’s System LSI Business Division (Nagaokakyo-city, Kyoto) has announced its “ProXStream EX” decoder equipped with PCI Express interface capable of decoding at 160 Mbps, the upper limit of HEVC standards.

Also called H.265, HEVC is a standardized compression format designed to succeed the current H.264/MPEG-4 AVC formats. ProXStream EX features 4K/60p resolution and Main10 Profile (10 bit-color, about 1 billion gradations) and is capable of 4 times the 4K broadcast’s 40Mbps – a mere 160 Mbps. This system also supports the current H.264 and MPEG 2 coding standards, and in its core is a dedicated LSI capable of 8 simultaneous decoding of full HD channels. It is also equipped with PCI Express Interface, and enables use of 4K resolution on PC.

The strength of this product is that it is a single-chip solution. Just announced in June of this year, the HEVC System LSI for Playback is equipped with a 512-bit width Wide I/O memory on a chip-on-chip, and operates without the need for an external DDR memory.

“In view of the transition in the imaging world from 2K to 4K, this is quite a leap in comparison. We would like to see this as useful solution for smooth transition to 4K by filling in that gap. This technology holds promise for editing systems in broadcasting stations as well is signage applications, and we believe that this is solution that will excite people even more because of its more powerful imaging capability” – Masakazu Urade, General Manager of Marketing Group, Panasonic System LSI Business Division.