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Company Success Stories - Intergraph Corporation
Technology Developed To Explore Solar
System Used By Intergraph Corporation To Fight Crime On
Planet Earth
Profile
Intergraph Corporation
http://www.videoanalyst.com
March 1, 2002
"AMD Athlon™MP Platform aids time-critical
investigations"
NASA researchers have long used satellite video to study
storms, whether they are violent eruptions on the sun,
or deadly hurricanes sweeping across the Atlantic. To
enhance satellite video images, two NASA scientists, Dr.
David Hathaway and Paul Meyer, developed software called
VISAR (Video Image Stabilization and Registration) to
help with their atmospheric detective work.
In 1996, it suddenly became apparent that the NASA technology
could also be used for more down-to-earth investigations.
In the aftermath of the fatal bombing at the 1996 Summer
Olympic Games in Atlanta, Hathaway and Meyer were asked
by the FBI to enhance a crime scene video recorded in
total darkness.
Since that time, this technology has increasingly provided
significant enhancement to crime scene video analysis.
Intergraph Government Solutions, a division of Intergraph
Corporation in Huntsville, AL, has transformed NASA’s
patented technology into a commercial product, Intergraph’s
Video Analyst System. This system is a Microsoft®
Windows®-based product powered by AMD Athlon™MP
processors. The system provides video enhancement, tracking
and stabilization capabilities for law enforcement, the
U.S military, and private security companies.
“The VISAR technology provides dramatic results in lightening
and stabilizing dark and jumpy video,” said Gene Grindstaff,
project manager for Video Analyst. “Since incorporating
VISAR in 2000, we’ve used Video Analyst to help solve
crimes ranging from murder to counterfeiting to robbery.”
The Video Analyst systems are industry-standard PCs configured
with the necessary combination of disk, graphics, and
memory to support graphics-intensive video data. “We include
a digital video capture card to allow customers to retrieve
and convert analog video data, like the kind you play
on a VCR, to a digital format that can be enhanced with
our tools,” said James Johnson, Marketing Manager for
Video Analyst.
Intergraph engineers consider the performance boost provided
by a multi-processor-based system to be extremely important
for the Video Analyst system. “This application is a very
compute and I/O intensive system,” said Johnson. “The
ability of the AMD Athlon MP processor-based system to
work well with video data makes a big difference in the
overall performance and throughput of the system. In video
applications, the system allows us to read data from the
disk with one processor at the same time we are processing
video and drawing graphics to the screen with the other;
in effect, a simultaneous read and write capability.”
Intergraph decided to test the AMD Athlon MP processor
shortly after it was introduced in 2001. “We conducted
our own benchmark tests with actual video cases used in
our service center to benchmark AMD's processors,” said
Johnson. “Our tests showed dramatic performance results.
The AMD Athlon MP processor makes our system really responsive.
It reduces processing time significantly, which means
we can process much more video, as well as do several
different enhancements in the same amount of time."
Certain key features of the AMD Athlon MP processor are
vital to the performance boost Intergraph experienced.
“The most important feature of the CPU in our application
is efficient use of a fast front-side bus,” said Johnson.
“The AMD Athlon processor’s front-side bus speed by itself
effectively doubled performance because it was twice as
fast as that of the processor we replaced." A fast bus
prevents “choke points” in the data processing. Large
cache is the second important feature that drives better
performance, and the floating point calculations are also
important. “The AMD Athlon MP processor also has some
embedded graphics instructions that allow better performance
when handling video graphics data.”
Intergraph had developed their own Video Enhancement Service
Center that uses the same technology to provide enhancement
and analysis services to customers on an as-needed basis.
Some customers need enhancements only occasionally. Others
have a greater need but are unable to afford a complete
system or don’t have the necessary infrastructure to purchase
and operate an analysis system. “We process tapes for
individuals as well as private investigation firms, attorneys,
state and local law enforcement organizations, and some
military organizations,” Johnson said.
Intergraph joins an expanding list of technology companies
whose role in national security may be growing ever larger
in the wake of 9-11. Security issues prevent the company
from disclosing specifics, but an Intergraph company spokesperson
was recently interviewed on The Discovery Channel about
the ways video enhancement technology could be used to
reveal key information from a recent video recording of
terrorist Osama Bin Laden. It is clear that Intergraph’s
Video Analyst system could be an important crime-fighting
tool for years to come.
AMD relishes every opportunity to work with innovative
commercial partners like Intergraph to enhance public
safety, today and in the foreseeable future. “We certainly
plan to use AMD processors in the years ahead,” said Johnson.
“Our benchmarks clearly show that AMD’s processors provide
outstanding performance. And in our business, where so
much can depend on the results we obtain, performance
is everything.”
? 2002 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Athlon, and combinations
thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Video Analyst is a trademark of Intergraph Corporation.
Other product names used are for identification purposes
only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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创新的微处理器、闪存和低功耗处理器解决方案
