Internet security video ICs to soar
March 13, 2006
By: Mike Clendenin, EETimes
Taipei,
Taiwan — Fed by a global focus on terrorism and the shift from analog
to digital systems, the Internet Protocol-based security camera
industry is beginning to boom, and that is expected to boost the demand
for DSPs and MPEG encoders in the years ahead.
Analyst Mark Kirstein at iSuppli Corp. sees the market for IP video
surveillance cameras nearly doubling this year and posting an annual
growth rate of about 88 percent from 2004 to 2010, reaching $3.9
billion by then. The video server market will hit $1.2 billion in that
time, he predicts.
Both will drive security-related semiconductor sales to about $800
million, up from less than $30 million two years ago. Video
surveillance will rapidly expand beyond traditional areas like borders,
banks and retail outlets and into schools, hospitals and even homes as
digitization drives down the cost of cameras. "There is a huge market
transition, and we are just in the beginning," said Anders Laurin,
regional director of Asia Pacific for Axis Communications AB (Lund,
Sweden), a global provider in the network video market. In the
mid-1990s, Axis was one of the first companies to launch a network
camera.
As President Bush wrapped up a tour of South Asia earlier this month,
during which he praised allies for their help in the "war on terror," a
series of Asian security conferences in Taiwan and Japan attracted
hundreds of technology companies. They hoped to ride a new wave of
security-related purchases by government and commercial enterprises
concerned that they might become casualties in that war.
The shift from analog closed-caption TV systems to digital cameras and
IP-based video networks is set to benefit a range of DSP suppliers. For
instance, Cradle Technologies Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is targeting the
high end with its multicore DSP-based CT3600 line, which handles
multiple streams in video servers, or its CT3400 family, which embeds
greater intelligence in "smart cameras." In Dallas, Texas Instruments
Inc. is also targeting its programmable DM64xx digital media processors
at this high-performance niche, but sees the market widening soon. "As
more IP cameras enter the market," said Yvonne Cager, of TI's video
security solutions group, "this level of performance will float to the
midrange as customers demand more performance and more functionality."
On the imaging front, vendors of higher-quality CMOS image sensors will
see increasing demand from the designers of surveillance-camera systems
as engineers seek lower-cost alternatives to charge-coupled-device
sensors. Companies like Pixim Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) are building
momentum for highly integrated sensor and image-processor logic that
boosts the performance of CMOS sensors in low-light conditions and aids
in camera-based applications such as motion detection, image
stabilization and scene analysis, said John Monti, vice president of
sales and marketing at Pixim.
Smaller design-services companies, like Taiwan's Faraday Technology
Corp., are also getting into the game, leveraging configurable
platforms to build up a position in the middle and lower ends of the
market. This week, Faraday will release a software update to its 8120
multimedia platform, an ARMv4-based 32-bit RISC (220 MHz) that supports
MPEG-4 and Motion JPEG compression.
Working with a local lab, Faraday is fine-tuning the programmable
system-on-chip with network comms protocols and streaming technology.
Two-way audio communication software that supports real-time streaming
protocols and 3G Partnership Project protocols will make it suitable to
conference between network surveillance hosts and remote workstations.
The company is working with system vendors in Taiwan that hope to get
into the IP camera market in traditional applications, and to expand
into home apps, which now represent only about 10 percent of the
market. "The market has been small because before, the QoS
[quality-of-service] of the video wasn't good and the [home net]
bandwidth wasn't enough. But these two problems have been solved and so
we believe the blocking factor is cost," said C.J. Liang, associate
vice president of Faraday's multimedia business unit.
By 2008, more than half of the installed video surveillance will be
done by IP cameras, J.P. Freeman Co. reports. The market research house
predicts that sales of network cameras will outpace those of analog
cameras by next year, and more than double those sales by 2008. Some
vendors, such as TI, have a more conservative view, but still think
IP-based digital cameras will outpace analog closed-circuit TV sales by
2010. "Analog and digital cameras will continue to coexist for the next
10 years," said Pixim's Monti. "Over time, the percentage of new
installations employing IP cameras will continue to increase steadily
until the analog market falls close to zero."
Isuppli's Kirstein agrees. "The surveillance industry is conservative
and low-cost, so [security system managers] won't rush out for a
forklift upgrade," he said.
J.P. Freeman estimates that about a quarter of U.S. security users
employ networked cameras, while 45 percent are interested in buying. A
growing share of those cameras will be embedded with high-performance
silicon to help decide when to increase or decrease resolutions and
frame rates based on changing scenarios, or embed tags in video to make
it easier to search and analyze. "Each IP camera is essentially a
computer on the network," said Eric Chan, director of Intel Corp.'s
infrastructure processor division.
So far, Intel is mainly a player in back-end apps: content management
and analysis systems, for example, that use digital video recorders
and, increasingly, dual-core-based PCs that enable the advanced
functionality coming to surveillance markets, such as object tracking
and analysis. Intel also plays a role in video servers in both analog
and digital systems, where it has promoted its Digital Security
Surveillance Platform. But Intel is also looking to move closer to the
edge, especially in high-performance IP cameras, where it sees a role
for its IXP2350 network processor.
"In the future, we see everything being integrated into flashy new IP
cameras," Chan said. "If you need a high level of intelligence, then it
could be both a high-performance network processor and DSP. If it is
just a basic IP camera, then it could be just a network processor or
DSP."
Observers believe that eventually the demand for processing power in IP
cameras will grow as system designers try to automate tasks such as
allowing staff entry to restricted areas.
