Matrix Vision has introduced the mvXCell-8i PCIe accelerator board, for use with the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor. The latest Cell/B.E. (Cell Broadband Engine) PowerXCell 8i processor has a standard core (PPE) working as a manager and eight cores (SPEs), which are optimised for fast parallel processing of pixel and DP float data. On the mvXCell-8i, all nine cores work with 2.8GHz. For this reason, the board can reach 180 gigaflops single precision and 90 gigaflops double precision float.
Furthermore, with four GB DDR-RAM the board provides enough memory for dozens of image data. The mvXCell-8i can be used as an accelerator board for Windows and Linux systems or as a standalone Linux computer. Two GigE ports make it possible to connect GigE Vision cameras directly. For demanding image processing, several mvXCell-8i devices can be configured as preprocessing devices in a PC. Thus, very compact, extreme powerful solutions can be realised. The high bandwidth of the PCIe x16 interface allows transferring image data directly from fast PCIe frame grabbers to the local memory of the mvXCell-8i.
Apart from image processing in industry, microscopy and medicine as well as video surveillance technology, the mvXCell-8i is suitable as an accelerator for many other areas, which need high processing power for demanding algorithms like in visualisation of financial modelling.
