Athena releases ultra low power FFT Cores

Family includes 2 mW FFT for DSL

GAINESVILLE, FL - February 26, 2003 - The Athena Group, Inc., a leading provider of signal processing technology today announced the availability of its third generation of Atomic Signal Processing FFT accelerator cores, ideal for power sensitive communications. Athena's FFT cores deliver unprecedented power savings for emerging communications and networking technologies, such as WLAN, HomePlug, and DSL. The family of FFT cores includes a 6 mW core for WLAN applications, a 10 mW core for HomePlug appliances, and a FFT for DSL which consumes less than 2 mW. Athena's proprietary arithmetic technology enables remarkable levels of power conservation across Athena's entire family of Atomic Signal Processing functions, GPS pre-processors, and TeraFire™ public key cryptographic accelerators.

"Numerous applications depend on FFT processing," said Dr. Jon Mellott, Chief Technology Officer of Athena. "Power remains a critical design issue, and achieving competitive performance within a reasonable power budget demands advanced technology. The Athena FFT relaxes the severity of the power budgeting problem and allows aggressive power targets to be attained with a simple design upgrade."

The Athena Atomic Signal Processing technology was developed explicitly for demanding signal processing applications, where very high performance processing or very low power consumption is essential. Athena Atomic Signal Processing functions are comprised of arrays of arithmetic units operating in parallel to execute a specific signal processing algorithm. Each arithmetic unit is implemented using Athena's proprietary arithmetic technology, which consumes substantially less power per computation than other signal processing solutions. With each arithmetic unit executing in parallel, a single Athena Atomic Signal Processing function can deliver computational efficiency reaching hundreds of billions of operations per second per Watt. Athena's FFT solutions are available for a variety of both commercial and military applications, including satellite communications, digital video and audio, and GPS.

Athena IP Products
Each Athena Atomic Signal Processing function is delivered as a firm core optimized to any customer-specified library. Included with each core are verification suites, timing and simulation models, and comprehensive documentation. Customization, integration, and hardening services are available.

The entire line of Athena Atomic Signal Processing accelerators is designed for efficient implementation and rapid delivery. Athena's wholly automated implementation and verification methodology produces synchronous, testable IP cores of the highest quality. All Athena IP cores achieve a score of 95% or better on the OpenMore scale of IP reusability.

About The Athena Group, Inc.
The Athena Group, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida licenses signal processing technology that delivers breakthrough performance, reduced area, and reduced power consumption in a broad range of SoC products. Athena technology is ideal for leading edge applications such as secure e-commerce, wireless communications, and video compression. In addition to signal processing acceleration functions for SoC integration, Athena also produces a full line of application level solutions.

Athena was founded in 1986 and is privately held.

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TeraFire is a trademark of The Athena Group, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.