Achieving higher resolution is a never-ending race for camera, TV and display manufacturers. After the emergence of 4K ultra high definition (Ultra HD) imaging in the market, it became the main standard for today’s multimedia products. 4k Ultra HD brings us bigger screens which give an immersive feeling. With this standard, the pixilation problem was solved in the big screens. 4K consumers are everywhere, from live sport broadcasting to video conferencing on our mobile devices. There are, however, many technical challenges in developing systems to process 4k Ultra HD resolution data. As an example, a 4K frame size is 3840 x 2160 pixels (8.5 Mpixel) and is refreshed at a 60Hz, equating to about 500 Mpixel/sec. This requires a high-performance system to process 4k frames in real time. Another bottleneck is power consumption particularly for embedded devices where power is critical. Being low power yet high performance, FPGAs, have shown a strong potential to tackle these challenges. In this blog, you’ll learn all you need to know to start developing a 4K video conferencing project using FPGAs.

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