Programmable, image acquisition and processing board for real-time vision

Montreal, QC, Canada— Coreco Imaging Inc. recently launched a flexible, programmable image acquisition and processing board, Anaconda, which is specifically designed for real-time image acquisition, processing, and analysis. Anaconda is PCI-X compliant, and reportedly is ideally suited for embedded vision applications, in which large amounts of image processing are required, such as diagnostic X-Ray, flat-panel display, and semiconductor wafer inspection, as well as settings with host resources are running at capacity or are unavailable.

Anaconda combines high-speed image acquisition with a fully configurable field programmable gate array (FPGA) and user-programmable PowerPC to deliver increased processing performance and high bandwidth data streaming on one platform. The board’s core is its image processing unit (IPU), which allows developers to implement algorithms directly in hardware. It consists of three elements: user-configurable FPGA hardware for rapid application development; general-purpose RISC processor with SIMD architecture, which is ideal for signal and processing applications; and an optimized memory architecture that accelerates processing speeds.

‘Anaconda offers an open platform for custom programming, allowing users to protect, preserve and prolong their investment in algorithmic intellectual property at a fraction of the cost and time of ASIC-based solutions,’ says Inder Kohli, Coreco’s product manager.

In addition, Coreco adds that Anaconda was engineered with in its Trigger-to-Image Reliability framework to ensure reliable and efficient acquisition control throughout the entire image capture sequence. This framework uses Coreco’s hardware and software to control and monitor the image acquisition process from the time that an external trigger event occurs to the moment the data is transmitted to the PCI bus.

Also, Anaconda is supported by Coreco’s software development toolkits, including Sapera LT software for acquisition and control; FPGA development specifications; image processing libraries for the PowerPC; and several third-party development tools. These enable application development on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. FPGA and PowerPC applications on Anaconda can be developed using standard third-party development tools.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editorjmontague@reedbusiness.com

Do you have experience and expertise with the topics mentioned in this content? You should consider contributing to our WTWH Media editorial team and getting the recognition you and your company deserve. Click here to start this process.