Texas Instrument's DM81xx Examined

Published Mar 22, 2011 00:00 AM
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In this note, we examine the DM81xx, a new chipset [link no longer available] and camera reference design [link no longer available] from Texas Instrument. The two most important additions to this release are likely to be 10MP resolution and SVC codec support, both feature sets that are currently rare within the surveillance industry.

The specs of this new reference design include:

  • Aptina 10MP CMOS sensor
  • DC-Auto or Manual Iris
  • H.264 / MPEG-4 and MJPEG support
  • H.264 1080p 60fps
  • H.264 10MP 12fps
  • Video analytic support through built in DSP

According to TI, open order entry starts today with an 8 week lead time. Given the development needed by TI's OEM's, significant production release of cameras using this solution will likely start in 2012.

Currently, Arecont's 10MP is the only CMOS 10MP surveillance camera on the market (note: Arecont does not use TI). We expect this release to expand competitive offerings in 2012.

Additionally, SVC codec support is interesting. SVC is a variant of H.264 that allows for scaling or dynamically adjusting the size and bandwidth consumption of the camera. It will be interesting to see if TI's support leads to production offerings from IP camera manufacturers. If so, it will likely also be dependent on VMS manufacturers for adding support to stream and manage SVC feeds. Alternatively, TI is also incorporating SVC into its DVR reference design. For analog cameras, this may provide a fairly straightforward path to using SVC.