For those not aware, some of the big hot topics this year at CES are drones and connected/autonomous cars.
Ambarella has a booth at CES and is getting in on the action in both these areas with their new line of chips. Demo’s focused on the obvious drone market, but also consumer focused security, and the future autonomous car market.
There’s a good article here about what they’re showing off at CES.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9922/ambarella-ces-2016-tour
From the article:
As far as real-time video encoding goes, the tech being shown off by Ambarella definitely impresses. I haven’t seen 4Kp120 recording in anything else that is consumer-focused, and the push for improved 4Kp60 HEVC encoding with 10-bit color and HDR support is something that will be necessary as new standards for UltraHD video are adopted.
In the near term, the 4k video stabilization has the potential to make its way into a lot of drones. Nearly all the top of line drones on the market do image stabilization mechanically right now using expensive, heavy, and power hungry servos & linkages. SoC image stabilization isn’t anything new, but there are very few companies out there capable of doing it with 4k video and even fewer at a consumer focused price point.
Longer term, its great to see Ambarella positioning themselves to get into the auto market, both in the nearer term connected car and future autonomous car. This is a big potential market for them and should be watched closely to see if they begin to get any traction with automakers.
-Joe