Introduction

Aitech's M597 graphics and video PMC provides a high-performance, highly versatile embedded graphics and video solution for harsh environment applications. Designed around the AMD/ATI E4690 Graphics Dual Head Processing Unit with its 512 MB GDDR3 SDRAM frame buffer array, the M597 can simultaneously drive two independent video streams in a wide variety of output formats. It integrates multiple supporting hardware engines such as graphics language accelerators, parallel processing engines, video and audio decompression units, and more.

The M597 supports the most advanced graphics and video standards including DirectX, OpenGL, and H.264, as well as multiple and versatile analogues and digital graphics/video input and output protocols. Most of the standard M597 output video channels are provided through E4690 native integrated video ports. Additional video output protocols/formats and all video inputs are provided by an optional sophisticated FPGA residing alongside the E4690 GPU, to complement the GPU's capabilities.

In addition, the M597 provides advanced video overlay functionality. The E4690 processor generates the graphics images, superimposes an input from one of the various video formats, and drives the result to a monitor. A second overlay process can be implemented simultaneously on the independent second stream, using a different video input. This process can be routed to the FPGA for output on an interface not supported natively by the GPU.

The M597 is equipped with graphics BIOS (by AMD/ATI), making it available for use in x86 based platforms including Microsoft Windows and several Linux distributions. For these platforms, standard software drivers (available from AMD/ATI) can be used. In addition, OpenGL packages are available to support the VxWorks and INTEGRITY RTOSes, and also to support PowerPC architectures.