Demonstrates Highest Speed and Performance to Support Industry's Move to Emerging Video Standards
CHIBA, Japan -- Nov. 19, 2007 Continuing to showcase its innovative solutions for video broadcast, Gennum Corporation (TSX:GND) demonstrates the industry's highest speed, highest performance video transport leveraging its optical technology. The unprecedented signal integrity achieved at 12 gigabits per second (Gb/s) validates the video industry's ability to move to even higher resolution video formats, to transmit multiple high rate streams across a single optical link and to support emerging high rate standards. The demonstration is being held at Gennum's booth at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition (Booth 5601), November 20-22 at the Makuhari Messe Convention Center.
"Just as we did in the early days of SDI, Gennum continues to innovate in order to enable our customers to move to the next level with their video streaming applications," said Martin Rofheart, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Analog and Mixed Signal Division. "This demonstration highlights the broad possibilities for our video customers to move even higher rates of video through their infrastructure. As important, new and emerging standards such as Ultra-High Definition TV and D-Cinema are now within reach, as these data rates will support the delivery of content that meet the high quality requirements of these and other standards."
Gennum's demonstration leverages the company's leading clock and data recovery (CDR) technology for video optical module applications, which enables the maximum signal integrity at these higher rates to deliver high quality video. The module, a standard off-the-shelf XFP transceiver modified to include Gennum's 12.5G CDR test chip, is capable of variable data rates from 9.9Gb/s to 12.5Gb/s. This variation enables support for a broad range of current and emerging standards, such as UHDTV, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) 435M, D-Cinema, 12-bit 4:4:4 1080p. Additionally, the high bandwidth enables up to eight HD-SDI links or four 3Gb/s-SDI links, creating new possibilities for design of serial routing and distribution equipment.
"We welcome demonstrations of this nature," said Peter Symes, Director, Standards and Engineering, of SMPTE. "We expect to create standards and specifications for motion picture applications at ever higher data rates, and proof of concept is essential to the credibility and focus of the work."
About the Demonstration
Highlighting the tremendous performance gains that can be achieved using CDR technology, Gennum's demonstration features a 13.5 Gb/s BERT (Bit Error Rate Tester) which is used as a variable bit rate source and receiver. This signal is electrically transmitted to the optical transmit module which converts the data from electrical to optical. The optical signal is then split into two optical signals. One signal goes directly to a high speed oscilloscope for observation of the raw optical transmit eye. The other signal is sent to the optical receive portion of the module. The signal is received by the optical module and converted back to an electrical signal, at which point it passes through the Gennum CDR which resets the jitter budget. It then passes through the crosspoint and is sent to the oscilloscope. The oscilloscope shows the significant differences in performance between a signal that has passed through the CDR and one that has not, with the signal having passed through the CDR showing an increase in performance.
About Gennum's Video Solutions
Gennum offers a broad portfolio of semiconductor solutions for the video equipment industry, including video optical modules, equalizers, cable drivers, reclockers, serializers, deserializers, clock generators and cleaners and embedded audio IP. The company was awarded a Technical Emmy(R) Award at CES 2007 for its SDI technology, which allows TV studios to transmit uncompressed, unencrypted digital signals within a studio's production facilities.
About Gennum
Gennum Corporation (TSX: GND) designs innovative semiconductor solutions and intellectual property (IP) cores for the world's most advanced consumer connectivity, enterprise, video broadcast and data communications products. Leveraging the company's proven optical, analog and mixed-signal products and IP, Gennum enables multimedia and data communications products to send and receive information without compromising the signal integrity. A winner of a Technical Emmy(R) award for advances in high definition (HD) broadcasting, Gennum is headquartered in Burlington, Canada, and has global design, research and development and sales offices in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Germany, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. http://www.gennum.com