Cloud, Skype and automotive cameras opportunities in India: GEO

BANGALORE, INDIA: GEO Semiconductor, a leader in programmable, high-performance geometric processor ICs, H.264 codecs, video, audio and human interface technologies announced the establishment of its India operations, GEO Semiconductor (India) Pvt Ltd, in Bangalore.

GEO has established a state-of-the-art facility on the technology corridor of Bangalore's Outer Ring Road. The India facility houses highly skilled engineering staff in areas of chip design, hardware engineering and embedded software. Inclusive of a multimedia lab and an audio testing lab, along with cutting-edge software, hardware and chip design tools, it is set to play a key role in the R&D function for creating end-to-end solutions.

Dr. Paul M. Russo, CEO, said: "India is a very critical geography for GEO, both from the R&D angle and the market perspective. We are very positive about the quality of talent available here and the robustness of the market that we can leverage."

He added: "The Bangalore office currently has 22 people. We are currently adding sales positions. India presents a huge opportunity."

The company sees two markets in India where it can win -- automobile cameras and HUDs (head-up displays), and cloud and Skype cameras. GEO has built its technology using 20+ years of development and over $300 million investment.

GEO's eWARP technology is said to be the world's only software programmable geometric and scaling processor. It provides a real-time geometric processing engine that is precise, extremely flexible and ultra-efficient in terms of power and size. The transformations may range from simple scaling to rotation (characterized by theta) to highly non-linear transformations with several parameters. Besides, powerful automation software will reduce the labour costs and cycle time.

The core advantage of eWARP technology lies with the usage of high-order polynomials that are implemented in a very compact method and provide the performance of hard-coded transformations, the flexibility found in a lookup table approach and the unique advantages of real-time programmability of the transforms. Combining this advanced transformation technology with GEO's sophisticated 2D filtering at high internal precision results in video with outstanding image quality. The technology has been improved and perfected over four generations of development and is supported by 15 patents.

W3 eWARP IC SoC update

GEO's W3 eWARP IC SoC will be sampling in July 2013. There are multiple reference designs. Already, 30+ customers are said to be waiting for samples. GEO's W3 eWARP IC SoC is said to be useful for military applications, gaming, etc.

Cloud cameras are said to be a new category of consumer products. The GEO clould platform connects cameras to smartphones through the cloud. Dr. Russo said: "You can see anything from anywhere. We are offering complete cloud, surveillance and smartphones camera software stacks."

He said that India presented a huge growth opportunity for automobile cameras, cloud cameras and surveillance. The market for cloud cameras in India could likely be 50-100 million units over the next five years. GEO intends to enter the automobile market by H2-2014.