BitFlow Announces Support for 64-Bit Operating Systems
For Immediate Release
Boston, MA - May 9, 2006 - BitFlow, Inc. announced 64-bit Operating System support for their frame grabbers at Vision East 2006. BitFlow's new 64 bit SDK will support all of their current products, and will work in the 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. BitFlow's 32-bit and 64-bit SDKs will be functionally equivalent, making it very easy for customers to move their applications to these new operating systems.
At the Vision show, BitFlow demonstrated their 64-bit operating system support by running their R64e frame grabber in Windows XP 64-bit. The demonstration illustrated acquisition of approximately 5 minutes worth of video. Acquisition was from a Pulnix 6710 running at 75 frames/second (FPS). The camera was pointed at a stop watch with 1/10 of a second accuracy. The sequence required almost 7.6 gigabytes (GB) of memory to capture and play back. The system was loaded with 8 GB of RAM.
The primary advantage of running vision applications on 64-bit operating systems is the access to an almost unlimited amount of memory. 32-bit operating systems are limited to 4 GB and much of this memory is already occupied by the operating system. With todays high resolution and high speed cameras, this leave very little memory for image storage. By contrast, the theoretical memory limit for 64-bit operating systems is 18 exabytes (18 x 10^18 bytes). Although the current release of windows and motherboard designs limit systems to around 128 GB, this limit will quickly expand upward. Vision applications can now store minutes, even hours, of super high speed image data to memory. Another typical application, template matching, can benefit from 64-bit OS support because there is now almost no limit on the number of "golden" images that can be stored and quickly retrieved from RAM. 64-bit operating systems also offer modest speed gains for intensive image processing applications.
While long sequences of images can be stored to hard disk arrays, the data rate typically tops out at about 100 MB/S with off-the shelf equipment. Capture to RAM, on the other hand, is limited only by the frame grabber. BitFlow's latest offering, the Karbon-CL, can acquire images at up to 2.0 GB/S, a speed untouchable by any hard disk array. BitFlow provides sequence capture, playback and on-line/off-line save to disk applications with its SDK.
Pricing and Availability
BitFlow 64-bit drivers and SDK will be shipping the third quarter of 2006. Pricing will be $595 (U.S. list price), which includes unlimited development and run-time licenses for a single organization. Upgrades for customerswtih with previous versions of the SDK will be free. Contact BitFlow (www.bitflow.com) for more information.
About BitFlow
BitFlow is a privately held United States corporation based in Woburn, Massachusetts. BitFlow is a leading producer of analog, digital and Camera Link frame grabbers. The company also provides image analysis and machine vision software and application development software for the imaging industry. BitFlow has shipped tens of thousands of interface boards to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), military, Research and Development, and educational customers since it was founded in 1993.