BitFlow, a provider of frame grabbers for machine vision and scientific imaging, has partnered with NVIDIA to co-develop a new software extension that fully leverages the power of NVIDIA GPUDirect for Video (DVP) technology with BitFlow Cyton, Alta, Neon, Karbon, and Axion frame grabbers.
The result of this collaboration is the BitFlow Direct-for-Video Protocol (BFDVP), a deep wrapper of NVIDIA DVP that enables simple integration of the BitFlow Buffer Interface acquisition API (BiAPI) with NVIDIA GPUs. The BFDVP achieves zero CPU use and real-time video imaging by eliminating the delay in getting video into and out of NVIDIA GPUs. This delay is caused by the need to use the CPU to copy images from frame grabber buffers to GPU buffers.
“BFDVP enables BitFlow frame grabbers to communicate directly and openly with NVIDIA GPUs, meaning that issues of CPU usage and latencies are eliminated and real-time imaging is now a reality,” explained Donal Waide, director of sales for BitFlow. “Vision system developers are now able to harness the graphics and image processing power of NVIDIA GPUs without the long latencies, often as high as ten frames, previously associated when integrated with 3rd-party frame grabbers.”
Being generic, NVIDIA GPU Direct for Video technology requires complex programming and proprietary libraries to integrate with an application. However, with the streamlined BFDVP from BitFlow the user can focus more readily on the two most important features of a frame-grabber GPU processing system: acquisition and processing.
“BFDVP minimizes CPU overhead because it handles the bulk of the management of the data transfer between the devices,” said Waide. “BFDVP fully synchronizes transfers so it does away with the waste cycles of copying data between device driver buffers and lets BitFlow frame grabbers stream video to and from the NVIDIA GPU at sub-frame transfer times.”
