AMD taps UK tool for video verification

Business news | March 5, 2014

By eeNews Europe

MPUs/MCUs Digital Signal Processing EDA & CAD tools

Argon Design has licensed its Streams and Coverage Tool to the Radeon graphics designers at AMD in Canada to test out its performance for the next generation HEVC codec. This is being used for the coming 4K UltraHD format that uses four times resolution of HDTV today and so needs more efficient compression.
Argon Streams is a comprehensive set of test bit-streams that are generated directly from the HEVC specification rather than relying on ‘golden’ decoder code. This technique avoids duplicating any subtle errors or ambiguities that are present in the HEVC reference code.
The companion Coverage Tool provides a detailed view of which equations, values, symbols and parameters of HEVC have been tested by Argon Streams. By measuring the coverage of the specification, Argon Streams has been optimized to reduce the size and number of test bit-streams, which in turn drastically reduces simulation time, while still providing full and demonstrable coverage of all aspects of the specification.
“Using Argon Streams as an element of our HEVC decoder verification strategy has helped AMD to build a high confidence that our decoder design is fully compatible with the HEVC specifications,” said Gordon Kerr, Director of Multimedia IP at AMD. “Argon’s novel approach helps to provide comprehensive verification coverage in an efficient manner, accelerating time-to-market for our next generation high performance ultra-low power decoder designs.”
"AMD has been an ideal customer for us," said Alan Scott, CEO of Argon Design (above) who is based in the St Johns Innovation Centre in Cambridge. "At their suggestion, we have been able to add several additional features in to Argon Streams to enhance their effectiveness.”
Argon was set up by the same engineers that started Cambridge video chip company Alphamosaic which was later sold to Broadcom, and now employs 15 engineers.

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www.argondesign.com

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