DVS Centaurus

Centaurus is the new video I/O single board solution from DVS. Combining the proven technologies from the popular SDStationOEM and DVS HDStationOEM boards, Centaurus offers developers even more flexibility, power and reliability. Based on PCI-X bus architecture, Centaurus supports all video formats from standard definition, PAL and NTSC, through high definition to full 2K film resolution. Developers will appreciate the flexibility of the tried and tested DVS API. In addition Centaurus supports OpenMLTM and is, of course, shipped with a DVS software developer kit.

More information can be found manufacturers website. Estimated retail price is around 7.000 EUR.

I've checked what architectures are supported with this card under Linux. Olivier Gappa told me, they support IA32, IA64, and AMD64. They also support additional 64-bit platforms like Irix and they are not planning to support *BSD. The drivers are provided as binaries, but they should be able to link to any custom kernel - reportedly.

Finally, they have measured latency of the processing, which depends on mode to some extent, but on average, it's about 6us. They also claim to be the lowest latency card on the market.

Documentation

• Centaurus - Installation Guide
• Accessory Breakout Box II - Installation Guide

Our experiences

First of all download the DVS SDK from the DVS OEM area webpage. We used SDK Version 2.7p30d for Linux AMD64 for kernel 2.4 & 2.6. Then follow the instructions in the README.linux file. In the flawless case it is necessary to run just these commands:

cd linux/driver
./mkdev
./driver_create
./driver_load

• ./mkdev creates the clipboard* files in the /dev directory
• ./driver_create should compile the DVS drivers. Be sure that the /lib/modules/'uname -r'/build points to the actual kernel source tree.
• ./driver_load loads the built module. The driver_load script actually executes insmod dvsdriver -hwpath=`pwd`. The hwpath parameter should point to the directory containing *.pld and *.ref files. When loading dvsdriver with just insmod dvsdriver be sure to have those files in /usr/local/dvs/hw directory.

Finally it is necessary to set the licence key to the card. This is done via the svram tool which can be foun in the linux/bin subdirectory of the SDK tree. The licence key is set by running the following command:

./svram licence key1 <licence_key_from_the_Licence_Key_list>

Be sure to set the right licence key, because the key is stored unalterably according to the Centaurus Installation Guide.

Latency behavior:

• according to the latest information from manufacturer, buffering of 2 frames on the Centaurus board is required for reliable communication (that's much more than previously stated 6us! :( )
• in our experience 4 frames buffering is required, which increases latency substantially! :(
• no DMA is available on Centaurus (HDstation does DMA!), so no line-by-line reading is available :(