Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX), a leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products announced a collaboration with Novatek Microelectronics Corp. (TWSE: 3034) (“Novatek”), a leading fabless chip design company specializing in the design, development and sales of a wide range of display driver ICs & SoC solutions, to unveil the industry leading ultralow power pre-roll AI solution for battery-operated surveillance camera at CES 2023.
At CES 2023 from January 5 – 8, Himax and Novatek will live demonstrate the industry leading ultralow power pre-roll AI solution for battery-operated surveillance camera. The highlight of this leading-edge AI solution is the combination of the Himax WiseEye™ WE1 AI processor, HX6537, and Novatek’s core AI vision processor, NT98566. Both IC have their own unique and exceptional capabilities. Himax WiseEye™ WE1 AI processor, HX6537 offering ultralow power pre-roll recording function while Novatek’s core AI vision processor, NT98566 conducted over Wi-Fi 6 protocol, enabling high quality, low latency live streaming performance.
As an illustration, the surveillance camera can operate with the always-on pre-roll function recording video clips at a slow frame rate, using only single digit milliwatts power consumption while the core vision processor is powered off. In the meantime, Himax WE1 AI processor intelligently senses a specific motion event, such as certain human behavior or suspicious activity. Once a classified event is identified, it will activate Novatek’s core AI vision processor initiating a high resolution recording of the event while stitching the pre-roll video clips in Himax WE1 AI processor thereto. This is a substantial improvement compared to what existing surveillance solutions offer in terms of privacy and security as users receive a thorough video stream complete with pre-roll video clips of what preceded the motion events. It also significantly extends the battery life of the surveillance system by approximately 30% in general use cases from AI image classification.
Additionally, the WE1 processor supports numerous house-keeping operations in the camera system, including battery management, field of view adjustment of camera lens, PIR and IR bulb fill light control. Novatek’s state-of-the-art core AI processor NT98566 is equipped with 1 Gb DRAM and can support resolutions up to 5M 30FPS video performance while simultaneously performing advanced AI operations on each frame. The NT98566 also features WiFi 6 design which allows streaming video output without freezes or delays.
"Partnering with Novatek is a win-win as it allows us to leverage each other’s strength in AI. In addition to both parties' collective years of know-how on panel display and in the emerging enormous AI fields, it also allows us to jointly engage with multiple global vendors for their next generation product launches,” said Jordan Wu, Chief Executive Officer at Himax. “We are excited to see WiseEye’s continued expansion into applications for people‘s everyday lives. Its adoption into surveillance applications is yet another strong demonstration of its agility and flexibility. We believe WiseEye will continue to open new growth vectors for us moving forward. We are proud to be at the forefront of innovation bringing our WiseEye, embedded with proprietary pre-roll functionality and smart image sensing to lower device power consumption while improving system security and overall user experience at the same time,” concluded Mr. Wu.