Talking about the security monitoring market and IPC SoC performance
The total global shipments of video surveillance cameras in 2020 will be approximately 580 million units, and it is expected to increase by more than 850 million units by 2022. With the advancement of technology, the commercialization of 5G mobile networks and the popularization of broadband networks, traditional closed-circuit security monitoring has begun to transform to network security monitoring. Security monitoring has been developing for decades, and manufacturing companies already have a complete and systematic industrial chain system. With the continuous maturity of design and manufacturing technology, the cost of security monitoring equipment has been greatly reduced, and the security monitoring market has gradually penetrated into various fields. Security monitoring equipment has been applied in transportation hubs, military, banks, schools, and community security.
Talking about the Security Monitoring Market
In recent years, the development of consumer electronics, IoT, industrial Internet, smart homes, and smart cities has promoted the innovation of security monitoring technology, and IPC (network surveillance cameras) has begun to emerge. Network surveillance cameras are widely used and the demand is expanding. The IPC SoC market is promising. Public information shows that Huawei HiSilicon, Texas Instruments, Ambarella, Beijing Junzheng, Fullhan Micro, Guoke Micro and other companies have IPC SoC front-end network surveillance systems Conduct in-depth research. According to the research report, it is estimated that in 2023, the market size of my country's security IPC SOC will reach 6.71 billion yuan.
In the field of surveillance camera equipment, my country's security monitoring equipment companies occupy an important position in the international market. The annual revenue data of global security equipment companies in the first half of 2021 found that the domestic company Hikvision's revenue was 33.902 billion yuan, compared with the previous year. An increase of 39.68% over the same period, ranking first in the global security equipment business revenue for eight consecutive years. Dahua Group achieved operating income of 13.505 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.27%, of which 5.1 billion yuan in the first quarter and 8.4 billion yuan in the second quarter, ranking second in the world. Among the top ten domestic companies are Yushi Technology and Tiandiweiye.
What role does IPC (IP Camera) SoC play in monitoring equipment
There are two main types of security monitoring, namely analog monitoring and IPC (network monitoring).
The analog monitoring is composed of front-end ISP chip and DVR SoC. The analog monitoring ISP chip performs image optimization processing such as noise reduction and exposure adjustment on the signal captured by the image sensor. This processing process determines the quality of the final video imaging. The back-end DVR SoC is mainly to complete a process of analog-to-digital conversion, converting audio and video analog signals into digital signals, and encoding, compressing and storing the video.
Network monitoring is mainly composed of front-end IPC SOC and back-end NVR SoC. The network monitoring back-end NVR SoC mainly receives the IP stream of IPC, and performs video encoding, decoding, storage, etc. IPC SOC is the core of the network security camera, which integrates CPU, ISP, audio and video encoding module, network interface module, security encryption module, video intelligent processing module, etc. The ISP module processes the raw data collected by the image sensor, and the processed data is compressed in the encoder module and stored in the incoming backend.
In recent years, the pixels of security surveillance cameras have been continuously improved, and the processing performance of surveillance data and video storage has also improved. In order to save storage space, many security surveillance manufacturers have upgraded the H.264 encoder compression standard to H.265 and H.265 standards. The compression coding algorithm is more complicated, and the performance requirements of IPC SOC are also improved.
IPC SoC determines a series of performances such as security monitoring equipment imaging, video compression coding, etc. The following will introduce the products of IPC upstream suppliers with a high market share.
"Little Hisilicon" Smart HD IPC SOC
(Image source: HiSilicon official website)
The "Little HiSilicon" series of chips is a series of externally supplied chips by Huawei. The series of chips are mainly used in security monitoring, set-top boxes and other fields. According to public information, before the Huawei ban takes effect, HiSilicon has a market share of 7 in the field of security monitoring front-end chips. Over 80% of the back-end chip market. HiSilicon has made a global deployment in the field of security monitoring chips, covering IPC, AI-IPC, NVR, DVR and other series of products.
Hi3516AV300 is a Smart HD IPC SoC, built-in dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with a maximum operating frequency of 900MHz, and supports floating-point operations and NEON acceleration, which can improve the performance of complex video codecs by 60%~150%. The industry’s latest H.265 video compression encoder is used to reduce the video memory size as much as possible. At the same time, it integrates a high-performance NNIE engine and an intelligent computing acceleration engine. Processing and analysis, low power consumption and other aspects lead the industry level, and can realize the functions of intelligent tracking and face correction. The chip ISP module supports functions such as multi-level noise reduction and 6-DOF anti-shake to increase video imaging effects. In terms of video interface, the chip supports 4M/5M two-channel high-definition video recording, the first channel has a maximum input resolution of 3840*2160, and the second channel has a maximum input resolution of 2048*1536. It is perfectly compatible with image CMOS sensors from mainstream manufacturers such as Sony, Panasonic, and ON Semiconductor. Hi3516AV300 supports mono differential input to reduce noise pickup. It also supports SD3.0 card reading and writing functions and TSO network acceleration functions. This chip is mostly used in security monitoring, cameras and other fields.
Ambarella CV5S 8K IPC SoC
(CV5S 8K IPC SoC image source: Ambarella official website)
Ambarella has a good performance in security monitoring. The Ambarella CV5S 8K IPC SoC uses an advanced 5nm process technology. The CPU is a dual-core 64-bit Arm®Cortex®-A76 with a main frequency of up to 1.6GHz. CV5S built-in 8K image processor, audio and video codec, decoder supports H.265 and H.264 video compression. This IPC SoC has the characteristics of low power consumption, and the power consumption is only 4W when recording 8K video at 30fps. CV5S has an advanced ISP, which can still provide excellent imaging performance in dim lighting environments. HDR technology can capture higher image details in high-contrast environments. The image processing capabilities of the chip have been further improved. The CVflow engine can run multiple neural networks (NN) at the same time, accelerating the computing power in time, and providing faster computing power with minimal power consumption. Support 10M to 100M network connection.
FH8658 5M IPC SoC
Shanghai Fullhan Electronics FH8658 5M IPC SoC uses RISC CPU, the highest operating frequency is 1.5GHz, the chip resolution is 2688*1520 5M video recording, ISP integrates real-time airspace noise reduction, automatic white balance, automatic exposure, and automatic focus And other functions, support H.264/H.265 bit stream, support three-channel ADC and single-channel DAC in terms of audio, sampling frequency is 8kHz~48kHz, it also has echo cancellation function, in terms of performance, a neural network accelerator is added to improve the image Processing capacity, high coding quality and extremely low coding rate, sub-pool 10M to 100M network access in terms of network connection, realizes intelligent interconnection. The IPC SoC can be used in a variety of network camera products.
Understand the performance of the above 3 IPC SoCs. In terms of video recording, all three chips support video recording with resolutions above 5M, and the 8K video recording capability of Ambarella CV5S 30fps is more prominent. Both support and neuron network acceleration to enhance image processing capabilities. It is worth mentioning that Ambarella CV5S still has excellent imaging ability in dim environments.
