New computer vision partner program

A couple of weeks ago, we announced our computer vision partner program, including our first three partners: ViNotion, PathPartner, and nViso. Under the new program, videantis’ partners bring their unique, computationally demanding algorithms to our high-performance, low-power processing platform and jointly offer these to high-volume semiconductor manufacturers and OEMs. We’re planning to further expand our partner program and are eager to work with companies that have unique computer vision algorithm knowledge.

The following three companies are our launching members:

  • nViso is a leading provider of emotion recognition software that interprets human facial micro-expressions and eye movements.
  • ViNotion specializes in intelligent image interpretation for the recognition of objects, with applications in video surveillance and people counting.
  • PathPartner has in-depth experience in the development of video analytics and vision algorithms for security, retail, automotive vision, industrial automation, and automation.

Read our press release

The Khronos family has a new baby: OpenVX

“Computer vision is the biggest, most disruptive, application segment in technology today,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, in the latest press release by Khronos, where they announced the OpenVX 1.0 provisional specification. The OpenVX API is a new open standard that targets the acceleration of computer vision algorithms, the kinds of algorithms that drive applications such as the PlayStation 4 camera and automotive driver assistance systems.
 
As with any new standard, only time will tell whether the OpenVX standard will become widely adopted in the industry, but with wide industry support it’s off to a great start.  We’re looking forward to extending our support to include OpenVX, in addition to continuing our support for OpenCV. For now, we’re API agnostic at videantis. Our key goal is simply to provide the lowest power, highest performance vision accelerator that’s available for licensing on the market, no matter what the API is.

Read our blog post about OpenVX

Show report: ARM TechCon

ARM TechCon expanded significantly this year with attendance up 26% to over 4500 and 150+ talks. Videos from the show can be viewed on ARM’s video channel. Our low-latency H.264 High Intra encoder and decoder were on display, as well as our multi-standard video coding solution. Another key demonstration was our low-power, high-performance computer vision solution, where we showed how we accelerate OpenCV. Compared to running such vision algorithms on an ARM host CPU, we get a 100x speed-up and 1000x power savings.

Read our show report

Interesting industry news

Arteris gets acquired, loses brain, continues walking
Network-on-a-chip IP company Arteris recently announced it has been acquired by Qualcomm. So that means the end of the Arteris brand and the ability to license the technology, right? Wrong. Interestingly enough, Qualcomm acquired the technology and the engineering team, but is letting Arteris continue licensing the technology to anyone, including Qualcomm’s competition. About a third of the company will continue to work for Arteris, and two-thirds will become Qualcomm employees. Read our analysis of this acquisition on our blog

Apple buys PrimeSense, co-creators of the Microsoft Kinect
Apple acquired Israel-based PrimeSense for a rumoured $350M. PrimeSense makes chips that enable three-dimensional machine vision, and is the developer of the original Microsoft Kinect, often hailed as the first globally successful computer vision product for consumers.  Does this move signal gesture-controlled technologies in new iPhones, iPads and iTVs? Only time will tell of course. What’s clear is that this is another sign that computer vision will play a big role in future consumer electronics devices. Read more

HEVC and WebM/VP9 in VLC
VideoLAN’s VLC media player software has added experimental support for two video compression formats, HEVC and VP9, which are at the center of a technologically and legally complicated fight for the future of online video. VLC 2.1.1, free and open-source software released last week, continues with the program’s broad support philosophy by supporting many compression formats. That neutrality, though, is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to next-generation video formats. Read more at CNET

We’re hiring

The videantis team is growing. We have new open positions for video codec and computer vision software engineers that know what it takes to optimize code for a parallel, high-performance video/vision processor. Are you interested in working with top-notch people and top-notch technology in a rapidly growing market? We’d love to hear from you.

View our open positions

Upcoming events

CES January 7-10, Las Vegas, USA. Meeting room 41022 Join us at the world’s biggest consumer electronics show
Mobile World Congress February 24-27, Barcelona, Spain. Hall 2, room 2B12MR Meet us at the world’s largest mobile technology congress

 
Schedule a meeting with us at these events by sending an e-mail to sales@videantis.com. We’re always interested in hearing about your video and vision ideas and challenges. We look forward to talking with you!