Novatek Licenses CEVA-XM4 Imaging and Vision DSP for Embedded Visual Intelligence

CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of signal processing IP for smarter, connected devices, today announced that Novatek Microelectronics, Taiwan’s 2nd largest fabless IC design house, has licensed and deployed the CEVA-XM4 intelligent vision DSP for its next-generation vision-enabled System-on-Chips (SoCs) targeting a range of end markets requiring advanced visual intelligence capabilities. Novatek’s current camera SoC lineup for car DVR and surveillance systems integrates the 3^rd generation CEVA-MM3101 imaging & vision DSP and is shipping in volume.

By integrating CEVA-XM4 as a dedicated vision processor in their next-generation SoC designs, Novatek and its customers can rapidly deploy highly-sophisticated vision algorithms to enable advanced applications such as surveillance systems with face detection and authentication, drone anti-collision systems and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These types of applications are built utilizing CEVA’s Deep Neural Network (CDNN2), a proprietary software framework that enables deep learning tasks to run on the CEVA-XM4 and outperform any GPU or CPU-based system in terms of speed, power consumption and memory bandwidth requirements.

“The CEVA-XM4 is an exceptional processor for imaging and computer vision, offering outstanding performance, flexibility and power efficiency for applications requiring visual intelligence capabilities,” said Allen Lu, Assistant Vice President of iVoT SBU, Novatek. “Having successfully collaborated with CEVA in the past few years for vision processing, we are delighted to extend our partnership with them and leverage the advances they have made for our next-generation SoCs.”

“Novatek has a strong track record of bringing high-quality, feature-rich and cost-effective camera SoCs to the mass market,” said Ilan Yona, vice president and general manager of the Vision Business Unit at CEVA. “We are excited to work with them to include our CEVA-XM4 and CDNN2 technologies in their upcoming products, providing the platform to enable visual awareness in any camera-enabled device.”

CEVA’s imaging and vision DSPs address the extreme processing requirements of the most sophisticated computational photography and computer vision applications such as video analytics, augmented reality and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). By offloading these performance-intensive tasks from the CPUs and GPUs, the highly-efficient DSP dramatically reduces the power consumption of the overall system, while providing complete flexibility. The platform includes a vector processor developed specifically to deal with the complexities of such applications and an extensive Application Development Kit (ADK) to enable easy development environment. The CEVA ADK includes CEVA-Link, which streamlines software development and integration effort, a set of advanced software development tools and a range of software products and libraries optimized for the DSP. For embedded systems targeting deep learning, the CEVA Deep Neural Network (CDNN2) real-time neural network software framework streamlines machine learning deployment at a fraction of the power consumption of the leading GPU-based systems. For more information, visit https://www.ceva-dsp.com/CEVA-XM-Family.