THine Announces the 1st Standalone Camera ISP Driver in the Linux Mainline Kernel

Linux Users Can Now Leverage a Standard Camera Driver to Accelerate the Integration of THine’s ISP Capabilities into Their Vision Systems

Applications include embedded vision systems, medical scopes, AR/VR systems, barcode scanners, vision assistive glasses, drones, surveillance cameras, body cams, USB webcams, biometric devices, and proof of concept for platform development for AI and IoT vision systems.

THine Solutions, Inc. (THine) today announced that the Linux kernel driver for THine’s ISP THP7312 is available in the Linux mainline kernel. The driver development finalization and upstreaming were done under partnership with Ideas on Board, one of the most reputable Linux consulting service companies for camera and display systems.

 

THEIA-CAM™ with ISP Driver Available in Linux Mainline KernelJPG

 

Until now, there has been no production-ready driver for standalone ISPs in the mainline Linux kernel. It has always been a heavy burden for system design engineers to develop and integrate a Linux kernel driver for the ISP, because it requires deep architectural understanding of the ISP and the Linux kernel structure. THine THP7312 is the first standalone ISP whose Linux driver is available in the mainline kernel. This now makes it easier to use THine’s standalone Image Signal Processor (ISP) with high performance image sensors in various SoC platforms to achieve high image quality.

The driver being upstream is beneficial not only for system design engineers but also to SoC platforms suppliers. MediaTek has integrated this driver into the Software Development Kit (SDK) for their Genio family of edge-computing platforms targeting AI and IoT. Pumpkin Evaluation Kits (EVK) for MediaTek Genio with THine THEIA-CAM™ Kit are available from OLogic, Inc.

“For 15 years, we have assisted many different clients with their camera needs in Linux,” said Laurent Pinchart, Company Owner at Ideas on Board Oy. “It will be a great improvement for users who want to use a high-performance standalone ISP without spending considerable amount of time and effort.”

MediaTek’s Senior Director of Technology Stéphane Le Provost said, “Now that the THine’s driver is available in mainline kernel, we could easily integrate it into our Linux SDK for MediaTek Genio SoC family and use standard V4L2 controls.  Customers can quickly develop high resolution camera systems based on THine’s reference camera boards and OLogic’s EVKs.”

 

 

“It is a great honor that our Linux driver is now accepted in the mainline kernel thanks to Ideas on Board’s expertise,” said Tak Iizuka, Chief Solution Architect, THine Solutions, Inc. “As a result, numerous industry device manufacturers are now able to easily integrate our Image Signal Processors into their embedded vision products and applications.”

Availability

The THP7312 driver is found in the mainline Linux kernel at:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/media/i2c/thp7312.c

Manufacturing Update