Avnet Silica advances Tattile’s ANPR camera with leading-edge Xilinx technologies

Distributor partners with FPGA leader and smart-camera developer to bring next-generation embedded-vision and machine learning technologies for transport and mobility applications to market

Brussels, Belgium, 9 November 2020– Avnet Silica, an Avnet company (NASDAQ: AVT), and Tattile, a fast growing technology leader in the development of ANPR hardware and software for embedded-vision systems, teamed up to further develop its Smart City camera technology. Leveraging products from Xilinx, a world leader in FPGAs and adaptive processing, and its knowhow in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, the distributor helped Tattile develop a highly scalable low- to high-end smart-camera platform with machine learning acceleration for road traffic applications.

Based in Northern Italy, Tattile develops advanced Smart City cameras that embed AI capabilities for a range of mobility markets including automatic license plate reading (ALPR) and intelligent transport systems (ITS). In particular, a key market for Tattile is developing automatic number plate recognition systems for automatic gate and toll systems, vehicle speed and red-light enforcement systems, and vehicle tracking and tunnel safety applications.

A team of field application engineers from Avnet Silica, in conjunction with engineers from Xilinx, worked closely with Tattile to help modify the company’s existing designs and develop a highly scalable low- to high-end smart-camera platform with machine learning acceleration for road traffic applications – all based around Xilinx’s Zynq® UltraScale+™ multiprocessor System-on-Chip devices, which deliver 64-bit processor scalability along with real-time control with soft and hard engines for graphics, video, waveform and packet processing.

“Avnet Silica’s application engineering team in Italy worked hand in hand with Xilinx and our platform design teams to deliver absolutely seamless coordination on this project,” said Corrado Franchi, CEO at Tattile. “The knowhow and the professionalism of the combination of Xilinx and Avnet Silica left a deep impression upon our engineers, not just in terms of cooperation, but also their ability to come up with highly innovative solutions.”

“Working closely with Avnet Silica, we were able to meet Tattile’s requirements for a processing solution that was both highly flexible and scalable, while also delivering high performance and being very undemanding in terms of power consumption,” said Gianluca Gilardi, Vice President, CMG Sales, EMEA at Xilinx. “Our technologies and our proposals beat many world-renowned competitive solutions and enabled Tattile to select Xilinx products for all its new and highly advanced smart ANPR camera platforms.”

“This is further testament to our approach to teamwork and working with key suppliers such as Xilinx, along with proof of our high levels of expertise in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and embedded-vision applications,” said Frank Hansen, VP Technical Marketing & Resources at Avnet Silica. “Much credit, in particular, belongs to our engineering team in Italy, which also demonstrates that we have the necessary in-depth engineering resources to deploy knowhow and co-ordination capabilities that can meet the needs of leading innovators across Europe.”